CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Robonaut, the first out-of-this-world humanoid, is finally getting its space legs.
For three years, Robonaut has had to manage from the waist up. This new pair of legs means the experimental robot – now stuck on a pedestal – is going mobile at the International Space Station.
“Legs are going to really kind of open up the robot’s horizons,” said Robert Ambrose from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The robot’s 8-foot, gangly, contortionist-bending legs are packed aboard a SpaceX supply ship that launched Friday, more than a month late. It was the private company’s fourth shipment to the space station for NASA and is due to arrive this morning.
Expect slow going for the robot: just inches a second. If Robonaut bumps into something, it will pause. A good shove will shut it down.
“The robot’s not going to have as much fun as the astronauts,” Ambrose said. “No jumping, no somersaults, no flying.”
Robonaut already has demonstrated it can measure the flow on air filters, “a really crummy job for humans,” he said. Once mobile, it can take over that job around the station.
How about cleaning the space station toilets? “I have a feeling that’s in Robonaut’s future,” he said.
This robot will stay indoors as it learns how to climb. The next-generation model, currently in development and targeted for a 2017 launch, will venture outside on spacewalks. That’s where the real payoff lies.
A robot doesn’t need oxygen tanks and fancy spacesuits. A robot never tires or gets bored. Why, a robot could stay out in the vacuum of space for days, weeks or even months, clinging to the station. Human spacewalkers are limited to eight or nine hours.
Now imagine base camps on the moon, Mars or beyond staffed by a team of robotic caretakers. Future Robonauts could be deployed in advance and get everything running before the humans arrive – and stay behind when they leave.
And if there’s a chore too risky for humans, “we could let the machine go out and sacrifice itself,” Ambrose said, “and that’s OK. It’s not human. We can build another one. We’ll build one even better.”
NASA’s space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, cautioned Friday there’s still “quite a ways to go” before future Robonauts make spacewalk repairs like the computer replacement job coming up Wednesday for the two U.S. station astronauts. Software is the biggest challenge, he said, but “these are great first steps.”
“They won’t ever replace the crews, but they could do a lot of the jobs,” Suffredini said.
On the Net
NASA Robonaut page: http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/default.asp
