NASA engineers recently completed a robotic assistant for astronauts, called Robonaut 2, or R2, for short. The robot, a humanoid robot with a torso, head and two arms and hands, will be the first permanent robot in space when he heads up to the ISS in November. R2 weighs 300 pounds, but is dexterous and is built and programmed to act like a human. His body is white and he wears a gold helmet so he can look just like the other astronauts. He has limited mobility, but in the future, robots like R2 will be able to stand in for astronauts on dangerous missions. The engineers will have a phased approach to R2 upgrades and could have a new version in about two years, depending on funding.
Robots like R2 are very important to space missions like they do on board the ISS. A robot can withstand extreme conditions better than a human astronaut can and is not limited to a certain amount of time for spacewalks due to the capacity of the oxygen tanks. Allowing a robot to do the difficult tasks involved in space exploration would let humans be much safer.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/nasa-robonaut2-astronaut-helper-packed-100813.html
http://www.philforhumanity.com/Space_Exploration_by_Humans_or_Robots.html
No comments:
Post a Comment