By sprinting 100 meters in 24.73 seconds, the bipedal robot Cassie broke the Guinness Book of World Records. Cassie, the first bipedal robot with ostrich-like knees, is the first to employ machine learning to regulate a running stride on outdoor terrain. Cassie joins a group of running bipedal robots that includes Boston Dynamics‘ Atlas humanoid robot and Mabel, described as the world’s fastest knee-equipped bipedal robot.

Cassie was created by Agility Robotics, an Oregon State University spin-off firm, and debuted in 2017 as a platform for robotics research development. And Cassie has continued to advance substantially since then, accomplishing a 5-km jog in just over 53 minutes in 2021 (in a single charge) to show off some amazing development. Although it could have completed the task more quickly, roughly six and a half minutes were lost in troubleshooting due to overheating and losing one of its legs during a turn.

While it cannot keep up with the lightning speed of the finest athletes in the world, it is an excellent example of robotics and engineering despite the fact that it operates without cameras or external sensors.

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The shattering of the world record took place on May 11, 2022, but Oregon State University recently released the footage and update. Cassie raced the historic 100-meter sprint at Oregon State University’s Whyte Track and Field Center. The robot started from a standing posture and finished the sprint in the same position without tripping – something which was necessary to achieve the World Record. In order to do this, Cassie had to use two neural networks—one for moving swiftly and another for staying still—and transition between them effortlessly.

Cassie was created by Oregon State robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with the help of a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Since Cassie’s debut in 2017, students at Oregon State have been investigating machine learning alternatives in the Dynamic Robotics and AI Lab with assistance from artificial intelligence professor Alan Fern. They were funded by the National Science Foundation and the DARPA Machine Common Sense initiative.

According to Fern, the Dynamic Robotics and AI Lab combine physics with AI techniques that are more frequently utilized with data and simulation to produce innovative findings in robot control. A variety of academic disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, robotics, and computer science, are represented among students and researchers.

As per to Oregon State University blog, Cassie trained for a year in a simulation environment with a full week of parallelization, a computing approach that involves numerous processes and calculations at once and enables Cassie to undergo a variety of training scenarios concurrently.

In April, we shared the news of Chipotle testing a robot named Chippy that makes tortilla chips, at Chipotle’s Cultivate Center, an innovation hub in Irvine, California. Now, Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced it will test Chippy next month in a restaurant in Fountain Valley, California.

Companies and restaurants are testing robotics and automation to speed up operations and free up staff from mundane jobs. Currently, Chipotle employees need to cook and season the chips, which takes time.

Chipotle is using its “stage-gate approach,” as it does with the rest of its new technology and menu items, to test and learn from staff and consumers before deciding how to roll out the technology nationwide. The restaurant chain revealed on Tuesday that the robot would make its debut at a location in Fountain Valley, Orange County.

Chippy can prepare a serving of tortilla chips in 50 seconds; it may take a human two minutes to do the work. A team member puts chips into a hopper, and an automated arm dispenses 8 or 9 ounces of them into a frying basket. After cooking them, Chippy transfers them to a bowl, adds salt and freshly squeezed lime juice, and then pours the mixture into a pan for bagging.

Chipotle is not the first food chain to venture into robotics and automation to address manual labor woes. Starbucks has incorporated new technologies for more quickly brewing drip coffee, serving food, and creating cold coffee beverages. In other locations, Panera Bread, McDonald’s, White Castle, and Buffalo Wild Wings are all experimenting with automated drive-thru ordering to shorten wait times.

Besides Chippy, Chipotle is testing a cook-to-needs kitchen management system in some of its establishments in Southern California. This system offers demand-based cooking and ingredient preparation estimates to maximize throughput and freshness while reducing food waste. By leveraging machine learning, the system automatically populates real-time production planning for each restaurant while monitoring ingredient levels in real-time and notifying the crew of how much prep work has to be done before cooking can begin.

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Chipotle’s new PRECITASTE-powered kitchen management system is being trialed at eight locations in Orange County, California. According to Chipotle, preliminary findings show that the pilot is successfully optimizing kitchen operations for staff members while assuring a steady supply of fresh ingredients for customers.

Chippy was created by Miso Robotics, a California-based firm that previously created Flippy, a kitchen bot that could prepare 300 burgers each day before expanding to prepare fries with a later iteration, Flippy Lite. Compared to human workers, Flippy and Chippy never need to take breaks or complain about their working circumstances. Other products offered by Miso Robotics are Sippy, an automated beverage dispenser, and CookRight, a coffee monitoring system that Panera Bread is testing.