A Giant Leap for Humanoid Kind - Robonaut2: Your Future Coworker?

Robonaut 2 Facts:

NASA and GM have unveiled robots that work alongside humans -- on Earth and in space.

Engineers are trying to mimic human form and have the Robonaut work at human speeds.

NASA may employ the robots as spacewalkers' assistants.

Robonauts Functions

Robonauts 2, intended to lend a hand to spacewalking astronauts, as well as make the factory floor a safe and efficient meeting ground for humans and droids, has been unveiled by NASA and General Motors.

"A giant robot swinging around that doesn't know whether a person is there or not is a bad thing. You can end up with all kinds of accidents. Robots can be very dangerous pieces of equipment," Marty Linn, GM's principal engineer of robotics, told Discovery News.

Large robots currently used in GM's factories are caged to protect workers.

For the past three years, engineers from NASA and GM have been working on the prototypes, called Robonauts, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. GM's droid likely will end up at the firm's technology development center in Michigan, where engineers will use it as a test bed for sensors, software and other products that could be incorporated into future cars. It could also improve manufacturing processes.

Robonauts 2 Technology

The technology needed to perceive humans and respond to human action is particularly important, and this is something that researchers all over the world are working on, says Matthew Mason, a professor of robotics and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Robonaut2 is an important platform for developing and testing such techniques, he adds.

Another key challenge is enabling Robonaut2 to communicate effectively with astronauts. "This is really a new area," adds Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a member of the human computer interaction lab at CMU. "How does a robot interpret social cues? How does it communicate back? We want robots to be team members, and the new work is a step in that direction." For the moment, Robonaut2 is limited to communicating with humans in simple ways. For example, when it points its head toward something, it is a cue that the human working alongside the robot should look in that direction.

(Mohd Akib Mohd Zin - 2009842344)