Cassie the robot creates Guinness World Record by running 100 metres. Watch
A robot made by the Oregon State University has created a Guinness World Record by running the fastest 100 metres.
The Agility Robotics-made bipedal robot Cassie ran 100 metres while remaining upright and then stood back up. Cassie clocked the historic time of 24.73 seconds at OSU’s Whyte Track and Field Center, starting from a standing position and returning to that position after the sprint, with no falls. It was run by a neural network that had been trained over the course of a year in simulation but was only used for one week at a time. According to the official website of the Guinness Book of World Records, while there are other such Guinness World Records, this one is based on a typical competitive human endeavour. It is not just a measurement of high speed for a brief period of time; rather, it is an accurate representation of average speed maintained over a predetermined distance, subject to the important restrictions that it must begin in a standing position and end in the same position. It can't just sprint for a hundred metres and crash.
On the website of the Oregon State University, it is clarified that a 16-month, $1 million funding from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was used to create Cassie under the supervision of Jonathan Hurst, professor of robotics at Oregon State University. The robot can bend its knees like an ostrich and functions without the aid of any cameras or other sensors, making it appear to be completely blind.
Here’s a video of the robot achieving the feat:
“We have been building the understanding to achieve this world record over the past several years, running a 5K and also going up and down stairs,” said graduate student Devin Crowley, who led the Guinness effort.
