There's also the motivation of practicality. Fong said there's a clear need at NASA to eliminate the number and duration of unproductive EVA sorties to reduce mission cost and wasted crew time.

Robots can off-load repetitive but necessary tasks from the crew. They can also enhance mission architecture, by providing more flexible and greater range for exploration. The distance Apollo astronauts were allowed to venture from the landing site was limited to how far they could walk back in a cumbersome space suit. This obviously isn't a restriction for robots. Fong said the maximum amount of crew members they will send to the moon is four. This makes robots quite necessary for effective lunar research.

Humans and robots will need to get along. So NASA has been practicing. Over the years, the space organization has wrangled up a few fascinating specimens to help develop these solutions. For instance, there's K10:

Image courtesy NASA

This robot is an autonomous surveying robot. It's equipped with 3-D laser scanners and ground-penetrating radar. The laser scanner is capable of mapping topographic features up to 3,280 feet away. The radar, which NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed, can map below ground as deep as 16.4 feet.

Image courtesy NASA

Robonaut is a humanoid robot designed by the Robot Systems branch at NASA in collaboration with DARPA. They built this mechanical abomination to function as an EVA astonaut equivalent for when they can't send in a human, but dexterity is needed. NASA has equipped the robot with both a soldering gun and a "human tracker" — so this will be the last thing many of you will see when the robot apocalypse comes.

In a video demonstration, Fong showed both K10 and Robonaut working with humans in a simulated construction environment. The humans put a panel in place and then asked Robonaut to solder it down. The robot agreed to the task in the same voice as Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer and started the job. Next the crew asked K10 to shine a flashlight on a certain panel. The robot also complied. But looking at Robonaut's eyes, you could almost see...

No, it's best not to think about it.

More information and pictures about Robonaut are available at NASA's somewhat peculiar Robonaut website. ®

Page:

• ← Prev
• 1
• 2

Related stories

• NASA's robotic moon-dirt grubbing contest is go (28 July 2008)
• Lunar mini-mole missile probes tested against Welsh target (9 June 2008)
• Space robot goes operational at ISS (18 March 2008)
• NASA, UK boffins plan tunnelling Moon mole robot (19 February 2008)
• NASA uses vertical treadmill to simulate zero-G jogging (31 January 2008)
• US manned spaceflight after Shuttle could be delayed (8 November 2007)
• NASA delays space station repair to ponder tear (1 November 2007)
• DARPA selects 11 robotic grunts to take driver's license test (1 November 2007)
• Astronauts complete spacewalk two (29 October 2007)
• Astronauts ride robotic arms into space (26 October 2007)
• Robo Developer Robo Development Conference in pictures (26 October 2007)
• NASA sats snap California wildfires (24 October 2007)
• Space shuttle Discovery launched (23 October 2007)
• NASA lights blue touchpaper on Discovery (23 October 2007)
• Mars rovers can keep on rovin' (16 October 2007)
• NASA mulls strap-on astronaut carrier (2 October 2007)