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Watch a Cassie bipedal robot run 100 meters

Cassie, a bipedal robot developed at the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Engineering and produced by OSU-spinout company Agility Robotics, recently ran 100 meters with no falls in 24.73 seconds at OSU’s Whyte Track and Field Center. The robot established a Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot. 

The bipedal robot’s average speed was just over 4 m/s, slightly slower than its top speed because it started from a standing position and returned to that position after the sprint, a challenging aspect of developing Cassie, according to the researchers behind the robot. 

“Starting and stopping in a standing position are more difficult than the running part, similar to how taking off and landing are harder than actually flying a plane,” OSU AI Professor and collaborator on the project Alan Fern said. “This 100-meter result was achieved by a deep collaboration between mechanical hardware design and advanced artificial intelligence for the control of that hardware.”

Agility Robotics co-founder and CEO Damion Shelton will be keynoting RoboBuiness, which runs Oct. 19-20 in Santa Clara and is produced by WTWH Media, the parent company of The Robot Report. On Oct. 20 from 9-9:45 AM, Shelton will deliver a keynote called “Building Human-Centric Robots for Real-World Tasks.” Agility Robotics will also demo Digit during the session, as well as on the expo floor, and tease the next version of Digit that is due out this fall.

Cassie has knees that bend like an ostrich’s, the fastest-running bird on the planet with the ability to run about 43 mph, and no cameras or external sensors, meaning the robot is blind to its environment and is not autonomous. 

Since Cassie’s introduction in 2017, OSU students have been exploring machine learning options in Oregon State’s Dynamic Robotics and AI Lab, where Cassie has been working to. learn how to run, walk and even go up and down stairs. To develop its robot control, the Dynamic Robotics and AI Lab melded physics with AI approaches that are typically used with data and simulation. 

The team compressed Cassie’s simulated training, which is equivalent to a year, to just a week by using a computing technique called parallelization in which multiple processes and calculations happen at the same time. This allows Cassie to go through a range of training experiences simultaneously. 

In 2021, Cassie traveled 5 kilometers in just over 53 minutes across OSU’s campus, untethered and on a single battery charge. During the run, Cassie used machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain.

The bipedal robot was developed under the direction of Oregon State robotics professor and chief technology officer and co-founder at Agility Robotics Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and additional funding from the National Science Foundation. 

“This may be the first bipedal robot to learn to run, but it won’t be the last,” Hurst said. “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.”

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Top 10 robotics stories of September 2022

Big acquisitions, bipedal robots and an FTC investigation captured your attention in September. 

Here are the 10 most popular robotics stories on The Robot Report in September. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter to stay updated on the robotics stories you need to know about.

diagram showing architecture of a robot vacuum cleaner

10. Sensor breakdown: how robot vacuums navigate

Over the past few years, robot vacuums have advanced immensely. Initial models tended to randomly bump their way around the room, often missing key areas on the floor during their runtime. Since those early days, these cons have turned into pros with the innovative use of sensors and motor controllers in combination with dedicated open-source software and drivers. Here is a look at some of the different sensors used in today’s robot vacuums for improved navigation and cleaning. Read More

combined image of the AMD instinct and NVIDIA chip overlayed with CHINA FLAG9. How AI chipset bans could impact Chinese robotics companies

NVIDIA and AMD said that the United States government has ordered them to halt exports of certain AI chipsets to China, which is the world’s second-largest economy. Both companies now require licenses for the sale of AI chipsets to China. Read More

dooson cobot in a manufacturing use case

8. Doosan Robotics signs cobot distributor in Northeast

Doosan Robotics formed a strategic partnership with Industrial Automation Supply (IAS) in Portland, Maine. IAS will serve as a partner and reseller of Doosan’s M, H and A-SERIES collaborative robotic arms across the Northeast. Doosan’s four M-SERIES cobot models are all equipped with six torque sensors – one in each joint. The models have a working radius of 900 to 1,700 millimeters and a payload capacity of 6 to 15 kilograms. Read More

7. Will Tesla’s Optimus robot be transformative?

Let’s be frank, Optimus feels a bit dystopian, as if we’re all going to be eminently replaced by a sleek, slender, cold electronic robot. It feels like Optimus inhabits a world of beautiful black and white design, while the rest of us get to drive around in stainless-steel Cybertrucks overseeing our hole-drilling operations on Mars. Read More

osu bipedal robot6. Watch a Cassie bipedal robot run 100 meters

Cassie, a bipedal robot developed at the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Engineering and produced by OSU-spinout company Agility Robotics, recently ran 100 meters with no falls in 24.73 seconds at OSU’s Whyte Track and Field Center. The robot established a Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot. Read More

Cloostermans legacy process production machine5. Amazon acquiring warehouse robotics maker Cloostermans

Amazon is continuing its acquisitions streak. Amazon has agreed to acquire Cloostermans, a Belgium-based company that specializes in mechatronics. Cloostermans has been selling products to Amazon since at least 2019, including technology Amazon uses in its operation to move and stack heavy pallets and totes and robots to package products for customer orders. Read More

MAXXgrip gripper

4. The Gripper Company launches MAXXgrip

The Gripper Company officially launched MAXXgrip, its first gripper solution designed specifically for warehouse and logistics applications. The new MAXXgrip gripper uses a vacuum and four soft fingers that move to solve the problems robot grippers have with handling pieces in warehouse picking and sorting jobs where there are a lot of different kinds of items to handle. An articulating vacuum gripper is used for initial item acquisition, then the fingers are deployed to stabilize the gripped item during the transfer by the robot. Read More

Amazon robot

3. Amazon testing pinch-grasping robots for e-commerce fulfillment

Robots picking items in Amazon’s warehouses need to be able to handle millions of different items of various shapes, sizes and weights. Right now, the company primarily uses suction grippers, which use air and a tight seal to lift items, but Amazon’s robotics team is developing a more flexible gripper to reliably pick up items suction grippers struggle to pick. Read More

irobot on the floor2. FTC investigating Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has officially started an antitrust investigation into Amazon’s plans to acquire robot vacuum maker iRobot for $1.7 billion. Politico reports the FTC is investigating a number of potential issues. The FTC’s investigation will reportedly focus on whether the data provided by iRobot’s Roomba robot vacuum gives Amazon an unfair advantage in the retail industry. Read More

rust linux1. Linux embracing Rust will boost robotics community

Linux’s Benevolent Dictator For Life Linus Torvalds recently mentioned that the Rust programming language would be used in the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel. Currently, the Linux kernel is at preview version 6.0-rc6 (codenamed “Hurr durr I’ma ninja sloth”) so we have a bit of time before we all have Rust powering the kernel, but the mere announcement is news-worthy. It’s the author’s opinion that this embrace of Rust at the very core of Linux will be a huge boost to the robotics community. Read More

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A system for automating robot design inspired by the evolution of vertebrates

Researchers at Kyoto University and Nagoya University in Japan have recently devised a new, automatic approach for designing robots that could simultaneously improve their shape, structure, movements, and controller components. This approach, presented in a paper published in Artificial Life and Robotics, draws inspiration from the evolution of vertebrates, the broad category of animals that possess a backbone or spinal column, which includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes.
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Exoskeleton walks out into the real world

For years, the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory has captured imaginations with their exoskeleton emulators—lab-based robotic devices that help wearers walk and run faster, with less effort. Now, these researchers will turn heads out in the "wild" with their first untethered exoskeleton, featured in a paper published Oct. 12 in Nature.
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Stanford researchers create robotic boot that helps people walk

Engineers at Stanford University have created a boot-like robotic exoskeleton that can increase walking speed and reduce walking effort in the real world outside of the lab. The team’s research was published in Nature. 

The exoskeleton gives users personalized walking assistance, allowing people to walk 9% faster and use 17% less energy per distance traveled. The energy savings and speed boost that the exoskeleton provides is equivalent to taking off a 30-pound backpack, according to the team. 

The goal is to help people with mobility impairments, especially older people, to more easily move throughout the world, and the Standford team believes that its technology will be ready for commercialization in the next few years. 

Using a motor that works with calf muscles, the robotic boot gives wearers an extra push with every step. The push is personalized using a machine learning-based model that was trained through years of work with emulators, or large, immobile and expensive lab setups that can rapidly test how to best assist people. 

Students and volunteers were hooked up to the exoskeleton emulators while researchers collected motion and energy expenditure data. This data helped the research team to understand how the way a person walks with the exoskeleton relates to how much energy they’re using. The team gained more details about the relative benefits of different kinds of assistance offered by the emulator, and used the information to inform a machine-learning model that the real-world exoskeleton now uses to adapt to each wearer. 

To adapt to an individual’s unique way of walking, the exoskeleton will provide a slightly different pattern of assistance each time the user walks. The exoskeleton then measures the resulting motion so that the machine learning model can determine how to better assist the user the next time they walk. In total, it takes the exoskeleton about an hour to customize its support to a new user. 

Moving forward, the Stanford researchers hope to test what the exoskeleton can do for its target demographic, older adults and people who are experiencing mobility decline from disability. The team also wants to plan design variations that target improving balance and reducing joint pain, and work with commercial partners to turn the device into a product. 

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New walking robot design could revolutionize how we build things in space

Researchers have designed a state-of-the-art walking robot that could revolutionize large construction projects in space. They tested the feasibility of the robot for the in-space assembly of a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope. They present their findings in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. A scaled-down prototype of the robot also showed promise for large construction applications on Earth.