It made history - It was slow but it still made history.
Cassie, a robot invented by Oregon State University in Corvallis, has set a record as the first two-legged robot to use machine learning to control its gait on outdoor terrain, the university said.
Using a single charge and untethered, Cassie ran 5 km or 3.1 miles outdoors in a leisurely 53 minutes. That equates to about a 17 minute mile and compares to the world record time of about 12 minutes for the entire distance.
The robot fell twice as a pack of students preceded it past buildings, homes, and country fields. As its metal plates hit the ground with distinct clomping sounds, Cassie consists of two red legs with a motor and controls where a person's abdomen would be, and nothing above.
Such robots could be used to use in the future to help deliver packages or help people in their homes. Part of the breakthrough was that Cassie learned how to balance dynamically, the University said.
Cassie was developed with a $1 million grant from the United States Department of Defense. The robot was created by Agility Robotics, a company spin off the University.