These New Robots Look Freaky But Can Do Amazing Things – NBCNews.com

Cassie Mitch Bernards / Agility Robotics

Agility Robotics took another approach

"The outdoors is complicated, and you're always going to slip and fall and tumble," Shelton says. "You wouldn't think of designing a car to be wrecked 20 times a day, whereas that is a specific design goal for Cassie." It can also stand in place, crouch, and keep its balance on a gently rocking dock; in the future, Shelton says, Cassie will also sport little arms.

Agility Robotics is planning to use future generations of Cassie for tasks like telepresence, inspecting industrial sites, and curb-to-doorstep package delivery. Cassie wouldn't replace people, Shelton says, but work alongside them to take over tedious tasks like hoisting packages.

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"A big portion of their jobis scheduling pickups, dealing with customer service issues, and that's not something that's quite as easy to automate," Shelton says.

Cassie comes from a line of robots inspired by flightless birds, but its ostrich-like appearnce was a bit of a coincidence. "In the case of Cassie you start with a biological system, do some math and turn it back into a design, and get something back that looks physically what you started with," Shelton says.

Nature doesn't always provide the ideal blueprint for machines. Airplanes were inspired by birds, but don't flap their wings to fly. "If you want to build a better horse you do a bunch of math...and you turn it into an internal combustion engine powered car," Shelton says. "We're not all riding around in things that look horses."

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But sometimes, robots that share an unsettling resemblance with living creatures are the best tools to get the job done. These agile, legged robots will prove their mettle on mundane stairs and driveways and in dangerous sites inaccessible to wheeled or tracked robots.

"There's so many areas where we still have to send humans to do the work where we really don't want to have humans," Hutter says.

One day, we may be able to remove workers from harm's way, and instead send legged robots galloping into burning buildings, over rubble, and into sewers or sites steeped in nuclear waste. These robots are still learning to walk, but wherever people go, they will follow.

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