When MIT’s mini cheetah perfectly executed a backflip on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the audience screamed and applauded wildly. If this machine — which also pranced around the stage like a show dog and stretched in several different directions — could perform such a difficult maneuver, one that is impossible for most humans, it should be easy to get it to perform all kinds of everyday tasks. Or at least that is what most people might have thought. In fact, the control algorithm for the backflip is surprisingly…
