He even predicted that a crew of robots would spending years helping to build a permanent Martian outpost before astronauts hit the ground.
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Research will explore how a humanoid robot might be able to operate on its own, in preparation for human arrival, and in cooperation with human astronauts. Both teams will receive a grant of $250,000 per year to fund research into how a humanoid robot would work in space. Alright, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement – there’s no imminent robot takeover of our institutions of higher learning, and they’re not a ubiquitous presence in our classrooms quite yet.
NASA has announced to team up with two universities to upgrade robots for exploring deep space. The Robot has been named Valkyrie and will be six feet tall and will weigh 290 pounds.
R5’s initial objective was to complete disaster-relief maneuvers.
“Advances in robotics, including human-robotic collaboration, are critical to developing the capabilities required for our journey to Mars”, said Steve Jurczyk, the associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The space agency believes that the humanoid robots could perform specific tasks during space missions before humans arrive.
MA Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northeastern Univ. were selected for NASA’s award.
NASA chose the two university groups through a competitive selection process from candidate groups in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge.
The two principal investigators: Russ Tedrake (left) and Taskin Padir.
The challenge forms part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program, and comprises two competitions: 1.
The space agency became urgently interested in robotics following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station incident in Japan, which the agency says “illustrated, rather candidly, how inadequate current robotic technologies are for use in highly unstructured human environments”.
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The robot on its way to college is known as R5 or “Valkyrie”. Robots like R5 could be used in upcoming missions where it will act as a forerunner robot that will work in conditions not suitable for human astronauts and create an environment that will be favorable to humans. These robots and their intended goal are important to the future of beyond-Earth exploration.
