Robonaut "B" Getting Ready for Space

mykepredko writes "CNN has more about Robonaut B, which is an updated version of the original Robonaut including mobility using a modified Segway or a 'Space Leg' which allows it to use handholds on the ISS. I was expecting to see that it was being primarily developed for Hubble, but it should also be very useful for the ISS, allowing astronauts to stay inside when construction resumes."

Comments

Boba Fett?

[Fiz Ocelot]

Looks like the engineers are big Boba Fett fans. Here and Here

Also the vision system looks really cool with some pics and a quote:

"Using a sophisticated measurement constraint system, which employs knowledge of human kinematics, the stereo vision system is now able to track the 3D location of a person's hands relative to their head location."

Re:So even when the humans are in space

[Christopher Thomas]

I wonder what the robots ping time is?

Round-trip latency for a robot on the opposite side of the planet is about 0.13 seconds. This doesn't sound like much, and would still let you get most things accomplished, but as anyone who's played a first-person shooter with a ping of 130 ms can tell you, it won't be fun, and will involve moving much more slowly and carefully than you otherwise could have for detail work :).

Round-trip latency for a robot directly above you in low earth orbit is about 2 ms.

If this is designed using more or less conventional hardware and is intended to be controlled in real time by a human teleoperator, I'd put its system lag at around 10-20 ms, but these assumptions are wild guesses, so its actual system response time could be just about anything.