Mar 3 2011
The NASA Robonaut 2 (R2) was launched on the space shuttle Discovery on the STS-133 mission, along with an astronaut crew at Cape Canaveral in Florida on February 24th. The Robonaut 2 would be the first humanoid robot in Space. The shuttle would travel to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Robonaut 2 would be deployed at the ISS, and there it would be mounted on a fixed pedestal placed inside the ISS labs and work along with humans as a robotic helper. It would perform jobs like holding tools and flipping switches.
The aim of this enterprise is to determine the behavior of manipulation robots in space. The crew members would also benefit as they get a second pair of hands. NASA trusts that this experience would help them to upgrade the robot so that it would support the astronauts in more complex jobs such as repairs and scientific missions outside the ISS in the future.
According to Nic Radford, the Deputy Project Manager, the Robonaut could work either autonomously or under remote control or even combing both. The astronauts could operate the Robot using either a laptop or a joystick that would directly control the robot from the earth but with a delay of a few seconds. NASA’s contention was that the robots could never be a replacement for humans in space, even though unmanned missions with robotic explorers have been very successful and rewarding. In the future, robots would match human manipulation and also their capabilities. The Robonaut 2’s dexterous arms and hands resemble the humans and are about 80 cm long with an ability to hold 9kg in Earth’s gravity. Its articulating fingers and thumbs have tendons similar to the human hand and each hand has 12 ° of freedom and hence the Robonaut could use the tools, which the human astronauts use.
NASA and General Motors in a joint project developed the Robonaut 2. It is also planning a Phase II where it would focus on the robot’s legs giving it mobility and a third phase where a robot would perform tasks outside the ISS.
Source: http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/default.asp