A robot sets a new challenge for human beings in marathons after having completed 100 meters in 24.73 seconds. The robot built by Oregon State University in the US is called Cassie. Cassie clocked the historic time, starting from a standing position and returning to that position after the sprint, with no falls.
In a press release the Oregon State robotics professor and Agility Robotics chief technology officer Jonathan Hurst, who led the development of the robot, described it as ‘a big watershed moment’. ‘This may be the first bipedal robot to learn to run, but it won’t be the last,’ he said.
“This may be the first bipedal robot to learn to run, but it won’t be the last,” said Hurst in the news release. “I believe control approaches like this are going to be a huge part of the future of robotics. The exciting part of this race is the potential. Using learned policies for robot control is a very new field, and this 100-meter dash is showing better performance than other control methods. I think progress is going to accelerate from here.”
While paling in comparison to a Usain Bolt (who holds the human world record at 9.58 seconds), Cassie’s time of 24.73 seconds is quite impressive considering it’s the first robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain.
The two-legged robot bends halfway like a human, bends like an ostrich and operated without external cameras or sensors. Its movement is escorted by machine learning to control its gait.
Reports from the department also showed that Cassie had previously completed an entire 5K on Oregon State’s campus on a single battery charge with a time of 53 minutes.