Agility Robotics Showcases 'Cassie' As Future Of Walking Robots

Oregon State University's robotics program has been spun off its own company, Agility Robotics, and it aims to 'revolutionize' the future of robotics mobility. The new company is based out of both Oregon and Pennsylvania, and it says it already has 'several' customers in the pipeline. The company's current crowning achievement is 'Cassie,' a bipedal robot that is able to walk around untethered on its own two legs.

Many robots, at least in their current form, roll around on wheels. That solution helps get robots out onto store and warehouse floors, but it also presents fairly big limitations, especially when it comes to the environments in which the robots can be deployed. Some other robots in the works have bipedal legs, but have to operate with a tether that similarly limits their current abilities.

Agility Robots imagines a future in which robots have two legs, enabling them to handle steps and surfaces other than smooth paved floors. Agility Robotics' CTO Jonathan Hurst elaborated on this, saying in part:

Quite simply, robots with legs can go a lot of places that wheels cannot. This will be the key to deliveries that can be made 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by a fleet of autonomous vans that pull up to your curb, and an onboard robot that delivers to your doorstep.

Cassie was made possible via a million-dollar grant from the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. According to OSU, this bipedal creation is considered a top innovation among global legged robotics. Agility Robotics' first sales will include other research and academic institutions as customers, helping shape future engineers and boost the robotics research community as a whole.

SOURCE: Oregon State University