(CNN) On a recent fall day at MIT, a group of players kicked around a soccer ball on the school's Killian Court lawn. They ran around and jumped in piles of leaves. They even did backflips.

But these weren't students, they were cheetahs. Mini cheetahs, actually. Oh, and they're robots.

MIT's Biomimetic Robotics Labratory, which sits across the lawn from the school's iconic main building, created these so-called mini cheetahs, four-legged robots that are powered by 12 motors.

They can run around untethered from cables, steered by nearby researchers using an RC-like controller. With the same basic dimensions of a Boston terrier and movements similar to that dog's energetic, scampering gait, the silver robots are strikingly adorable.

"My hobby was watching cheetah videos on YouTube," said MIT Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Sangbae Kim. Inspired by the beauty of the world's fastest animal, Kim challenged two of his graduate students, Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo, to create a robot that can move as gracefully as the spotted African feline.

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