Two-legged robot 'Cassie' demonstrates complex locomotion

Walking robots may soon be delivering packages or even saving lives. Oregon State University has spun off a business, Agility Robotics, that aims at making "legged locomotion" an essential part of day-to-day life.

The company will offer robotics designed from the technologies developed at the university.

The highlight of those technologies is a bipedal robot they call "Cassie."

"So what we're trying to achieve is the versatility, and the robustness, and the efficiency of locomotion that we see in animals. We want to be able to design and build machines that can go anywhere that a human can go and run on about the same amount of energy," said Oregon State University associate professor of robotics, Jonathan Hurst.

Cassie can stand-up, steer itself away from obstacles, and even fall without hurting itself, according to its creators.

"So a lot of the difference between our machine walking around and a lot of other robots you might see is really under the hood, and you don't notice it until the robot encounters a completely unexpected disturbance and stumbles and recovers, whereas the other machine might never be able to handle that sort of thing," said Hurst.

Hurst says one day walking robots like Cassie may allow for the autonomous delivery of packages 24 hours a day, or could even save lives in emergency situations.

"Imagine you've got a fire in a building and the fire chief isn't really sure if somebody is still in the building. And they have to make a difficult decision about whether they're going to send one of their firefighters in because it's dangerous. But if you've got a robot that has the same ability as a person then it's a no brainer; you send a robot in," said Hurst.

Cassie was built with a $1 million grant from the U.S. government. — Reuters