[The Sabbaticus]

ISS’s experimental Robonaut gets new legs

A new robonaut is delivered to the ISS.

By Annika Darling, The Space Reporter
Monday, April 21, 2014

A SpaceX supply ship was launched Friday carrying new legs for the International Space Station’s experimental Robonaut, the first humanoid living in space. The legs were scheduled to arrive Easter Sunday morning.

For the past three years, Robonaut has functioned as merely a torso on a pedestal. The new legs bring the promise of greater mobility for Robonaut and the ability to help with a wider variety of jobs around the station.

With its new legs Robonaut will stand 8ft tall. The legs are extremely malleable and gangly. The contortionist-bending legs will help the robot clasp onto items as it moves about the ship. Each 4ft 8in leg has seven joints. Instead of feet there are grippers, each with a light, camera and sensor for building 3D maps.

“Imagine monkey feet with eyes in the palm of each foot,” said Robert Ambrose from Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Nasa engineers based the design on the tether attachments used by spacewalking astronauts. The legs cost $6m to develop and another $8m to build and certify for flight. The torso (with head and arms delivered by space shuttle Discovery in 2011 on its final flight) cost $2.5m, not counting the untold millions of dollars spent on development and testing.

The SpaceX cargo ship was a month behind schedule, and marks the private company’s fourth shipment to the ISS. The unmanned Dragon capsule holds 2 toms of space-station supplies and experiments, including Robonuat’s legs.

“Legs are going to really kind of open up the robot’s horizons,” said Ambrose.

However, Robonaut will still be somewhat limited in his mobility until a battery backpack arrives on another supply ship later this year. Until then, the multimillion-dollar robot will need a power extension cord to stretch its legs and will be restricted to the testing area on the U.S. side of the space station. Testing should start in a few months.

Nasa’s space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, cautioned on Friday that there was still “quite a ways to go” before future Robonauts make spacewalk repairs like the computer replacement job coming up Wednesday for the two US space station astronauts. Software is the biggest challenge, he said, but “these are great first steps.”

For now, most of Robonauts new activities will be mundane in nature, such as performing cleaning chores and fetching things for the human crew.

“They won’t ever replace the crews, but they could do a lot of the jobs,” Suffredini said.

The Space Reporter

What they didn't tell the reader is that the Americans have covertly installed a proto-Cylon on board the ISS.



How will we ever trust the Americans again after unleashing the Cylon terror on space?

[teedoffshrew]

I do love this stuff, but because it's so unverifiable I have trouble entertaining the conversations. Perhaps that's how it is supposed to be, but I do believe we are doing humanity a disservice by not thrusting these subjects to the fore.

So what is a Proto Cylon and why would the Americans covertly instal one on the ISS?