'Cassie' achieved the feat in just over 53 minutes, which may be unimpressive in human terms - particularly during the Tokyo Olympics 2020 - but it is significantly faster than other ML bipedal robots.
Cassie was developed under the direction of robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1m (£700K) grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
It was the first bipedal robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain and completed the 5K run on Oregon State’s campus untethered and powered by a single battery charge.
“The Dynamic Robotics Laboratory students in the OSU College of Engineering combined expertise from biomechanics and existing robot control approaches with new machine learning tools,” said Hurst. “This type of holistic approach will enable animal-like levels of performance. It’s incredibly exciting.”
Cassie, with knees that bend like an ostrich’s, taught itself to...