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Humanoid Robot for Spacewalks
Nils writes "Here is the web page of a research project at NASA JSC's Dexterous Robots Lab (DRL) to develop a humanoid robot for use in space. It is state-of-the-art with incredible hands, arms, torso, and stereoscopic vision for remote control. Very cool." We had a story on the Robonaut two years ago, but it looks like they've come a long way since then.
I'm thinking of people with disabilities.
Since NASA is so well-funded and since it attracts such talented engineers, let's hope for spinoffs of research into mimicking human function will improve the quality of life for disabled individuals.
Honda have spent millions on research and development of their humanoid robot and nasa start from scratch again with what looks like an inferior product ?, Honda was at robonauts development status years ago , it seems a shame to ignore it and try to re-invent it, dont forget that they probably has more practical experience of robots in the commercial workplace than nasa do (car factories)
why dont they collaborate with people such as Honda instead of starting from scratch and wasting millions of dollars in the process ?
i presume Honda's goals are similar to Nasa's in regards to putting robots in hostile enviroments, i think its about time people took humanoid robots a bit more seriously than some do and start putting them to practical uses, sure there is the argument that they are not suited to those enviroments but hey we havent done to bad with 10 fingers 2 hands,legs and a torso and these research groups would probably agree.
if people talked to each other more on this planet maybe we would get somewhere
Forget about human controllers; leave the robots to do it themselves.
This is a perfect application for artificial intelligence. I believe the field has suffered on earth due to a lack of funding because there are no real applications where computers are really an economical solution instead of humans.
AI is the economical solution to space travel - if it is used it could undoubtedly save billions. Therefore at least millions should should go into developing and researching AI for space travel. Instead NASA and many "scientists" seem obsessed with the symbolism of uneconomically sending real people into space...