space : NASA's Robonaut 2 Droid Gets Its Legs on Space Station
Look out, astronauts – your companion robot on the International Space Station is now mobile! NASA's Robonaut 2 has received a set of legs that will help it move around the station, and will eventually enable the bot to work on repairs both inside and outside the orbiting outpost.
NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who commanded the expedition 40 crew station, helped establish the humanoid robot appendages at the end of August, before returning to Earth last week. The legs help the robot move around the space station to perform simple tasks. Later that year, after some changes in your upper body, later this year, Robonaut 2 will use his new legs to venture into his first space walk also.
"You can do anything if you are set on a candlestick, that is what we have in the last two years," Ron Diftler, Robonaut project's principal investigator, said in a television interview on NASA TV. "With the addition of the legs, we can go mobile." [See photos of humanoid robot Robonaut 2 NASA]
While the top half of Robonaut like a human, the legs do not look like the legs of a person very well. Instead of feet, the robot has features that allow you to lock in and edit objects. The legs are longer than the legs of a man - a 9 feet (2.7 meters) - and are more flexible, giving the robot more ways to cling to things in or out of the station.
"In space, no uses her human legs in the way of using them in the ground," said Diftler. "We do not adhere to the human form, that makes no sense." NASA researchers have not even had the legs to mind when they sent Robonaut 2 to the space station in 2011, but it was possible to add tabs with improved wiring and level of robot computer systems. "
The legs were transported to the space station aboard a freighter in April.Yet, even if its creation, Robonaut 2 was sometimes used by the crews of the space station. In February 2012, RobonautIt shook hands with Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank, and earlier this year, the robot uses a "job board" to test their ability to manipulate the buttons, switches and knobs. More recently, Robonaut has been moving "soft" work such as blankets that provide thermal protection for the components of the space station.
Last year, the astronaut Tom Marshburn teleoperating Robonaut tested using virtual reality gear to control the robot and raise a floating object.
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