What just happened? In what is no doubt a major step toward the creation of Terminator-style cyborgs that will hunt the human race to extinction, a bipedal machine called Cassie has just become the first robot to run five kilometres, a feat it managed in 53 minutes, on a single charge, and without a tether.
TechCrunch notes that Cassie is the basis of delivery bot Digit, created by Agility Robotics, a spin-off of Oregon State University. It started life as Cassie the Robot delivery ostrich back in 2017.
A team from the Dynamics Robotics Laboratory in OSU’s College of Engineering previously used a simulator to train Cassie to go up and down stairs without using LIDAR or a camera. Now, that same team has trained it to run using a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, which allowed the system to understand how to shift its weight while running to stay upright without a tether.
“Deep reinforcement learning is a powerful method in AI that opens up skills like running, skipping and walking up and down stairs,” said undergrad student Yesh Godse.
The 53 minutes and 3 seconds it took Cassie to complete the run included around 6.5 minutes of troubleshooting to address an overheated computer and after it took a turn too quickly that knocked the robot off its legs.
Cassie did have a human controller throughout the run, so we don’t need to start worrying about Black Mirror-like robots patrolling the wastelands of the earth just yet. OSU robotics professor and Agility Robotics co-founder Jonathan Hurst has a more optimistic view: “In the not very distant future, everyone will see and interact with robots in many places in their everyday lives, robots that work alongside us and improve our quality of life.”
https://www.techspot.com/news/90581-watch-cassie-bipedal-robot-complete-5k-run.html
