Robonaut has leg up at last
NASA creation going mobile at space station
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 newpair of legsmeansthe experimental robot — nowstuckonapedestal— is going mobile at the International Space Station.
“Legs are going to really kind of open up the robot’s horizons,” saidRobert Ambrose of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
It’s the next big step in NASA’s quest to develop robotic helpers for astronauts. With legs, the 8foot Robonaut will be able to climb throughout the 260-mile-high outpost, performing mundane cleaning chores and fetching things for the human crew.
The robot’s gangly, contortionist- bending legs are packed aboard a SpaceX supply ship that is due to arrive Easter morning.
Until a battery backpack arrives on another supply ship later this year, the multimillion- dollar robot will need a power extension cord to stretch its legs, limiting its testing area to theU.S. side of the space station.
Each leg — 4 feet, 8 inches long — has seven joints. Instead of feet, there are grippers with a light, camera and sensor for building 3-D maps.
The legs cost $6 million to develop and another $8 million to build and certify for flight.
Robonaut already has demonstrated it can measure the flowon air filters, “a really crummy job for humans,” Ambrose 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,” Ambrose said.