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NASA Selects Universities To Develop Humanoid Robot Astronauts (examiner.com)

Posted by timothy on from the not-sexbots-this-time-ok dept.

MarkWhittington writes: NASA announced that it is sending copies of its R5 Valkyrie humanoid robot to two universities for software upgrades and other research and development. The effort is part of a continuing project to develop cybernetic astronauts that will assist human astronauts in exploring other worlds. The idea is that robot astronauts would initially scout potentially hazardous environments, say on Mars, and then actively collaborate with their human counterparts in exploration. NASA is paying each university chosen $250,000 per year for two years to perform the R&D. The university researchers will have access to NASA expertise and facilities to perform the upgrades. Spoiler alert: the robots are both going to Greater Boston, to teams at MIT and Northeastern University respectively.

21 comments

  1. More disgusting Republican... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    corporate welfare.

    1. Re:More disgusting Republican... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Universities are not corporations. They can do the same thing as corporations however they are not bound by minimum was laws because they can charge their work force tuition and have them work for free under the idea it would provide college credit.

      --
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  2. The real game plan: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Develop cybernetic warriors to infiltrate ISIS and destroy them.

  3. DUPE by OzPeter · · Score: 2

    And it's still on the front page

    MIT Helping NASA Build Valkyrie Robots For Space Missions

    More proof that the "you are all cows" guy is referring to the editors

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  4. Read it first on The Onion by barlevg · · Score: 1

    http://www.theonion.com/americanvoices/nasa-gives-robots-universities-aid-mars-mission-51868

    “Once Valkyrie gets that first taste of Comparative Media Studies 100, Mars will be the last thing on its mind.”

  5. Oooh, long bones! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Oh my eff8ng god. Stop wi5h the humanoid stuff please.

    Make the multi-swish-armed squiddies from Matrix, which will be much more useful and capable of movement than these stupid, oaflike, ponderous mechanical apes (of apes).

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  6. And it begins.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So now MIT (in the near future to be known as CIT) has its first prototype synth. Give it 200 years and a nuclear apocalypse, and these will be Human 2.0 .

  7. Robots have all the fun by Yergle143 · · Score: 1

    This dovetails on an idea I've wondered about...how good are the rovers from Apollo 15 16 and 17? Maybe the killer app for this humanoid is to land her by the 70s vintage cars we left there with some spare rechargeable batteries, a set of tools and a portable solar array. Have Valkyrie fire up the juice on the drive train and then set off with the goal to make tracks across the entire lunar equator. I guess the question is, did we leave the keys in the ignition?

    1. Re:Robots have all the fun by ickleberry · · Score: 1

      They'd have to program the robot to drive a manual gearbox first. Robots these days would be utterly lost without a familiar prundle stick to put into 'D'

  8. Grammar anyone? by Sowelu · · Score: 1

    Come on, article writer, if you're going to give something named "Valkyrie" a gendered pronoun, maybe "he" isn't the right choice.

  9. dont need robots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you just need java multicore intelligence . the JMI will design the robots.

  10. Why humanoid? by Sumus+Semper+Una · · Score: 2

    Ok, I get the robot part. Makes enough sense to me and doesn't require explanation. But why humanoid? So the astronauts will have an illusion of more humans to interact with? Because they want the robot to perform tasks on machines that are only capable of accommodating the human form? Because it makes better PR than a more outlandish but perhaps more sensible quadruped approach? Some sort of official response to that question seems like it would have been a no-brainer for the articles.

    1. Re:Why humanoid? by Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Forget quadruped, what exactly do legs bring to the equation? Humans use tons of robots to do a vast range of industrial tasks, but they're not legged - if they need to be able to move freely, they're on wheels or tracks. And their bodies are generally just one or more big arms with various gripping or tool elements as "fingers".

      Why legs? So it can fall over?

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    2. Re:Why humanoid? by Lodlaiden · · Score: 2

      Why not just send Big Dog? That thing looked like it could run across all Mars and over any terrain without a problem.

      --
      Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
    3. Re:Why humanoid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because being able to step over eight inch high rocks is a Feature in an exploratory robot.

    4. Re:Why humanoid? by Rei · · Score: 1

      Which is why we make offroad vehicles on Earth with legs?

      --
      Hello from Sputnik 2. I am receiving you.
  11. why NASA suffers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MIT is great, and it's a nice story to talk about students working on projects like this. But... why would NASA choose to employ a collection of students (academic research) over a collection of graduates? They could even keep things in Boston, there are plenty of high-tech development studios run by MIT and Harvard grads that would be great at this kind of thing.

    It used to be that we would select some professional work groups and some academic work groups for this kind of work. That was good for everyone. We got the high level professional work done, we got the students trained, and the pros and the academics got to mix their ideas. Now, we routinely only select academic groups. The result is very good academic work. It's important to realize that that's not the same thing as space exploration, or dual-use technology development.

    1. Re:why NASA suffers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First of all, NASA isn't employing these students. It's setting aside a relatively small amount of funding ($500k per university) for performing research. Like other government agencies, part of NASA's budget is used for research grants to essentially support training the next generation of science, engineering, and math students. Such grants may produce lucrative ideas/prototypes that NASA can use. NASA can then directly hire on the students once they graduate to continue exploring the ideas or developing the prototypes if it is deemed promising.

      By funding basic research, NASA is able to explore a range of (risky) ideas to see which ones work and which ones don't. They aren't necessarily looking for a complete product to be developed. Rather, they want to determine what they can do with their current prototype, what it can be used for, and how it can potentially be improved. Academia is usually well suited for this type of work. Once NASA can determine potentially fruitful development areas, it can then go to a defense contractor to implement those ideas from academia.

      As you point out, NASA has the option of giving the grant to a development studio. However, that grant money wouldn't go a long way. At best, you'd be able to pay the salaries of either two senior engineers for a single year; the rest of the money would go for management overhead costs, equipment, supplies, and so forth. In an academic environment, you could hire three or four graduate students for two years on that same amount. The cost of the principal investigator (essentially management overhead) is also significantly less in an academic environment than in industry, since a huge majority of his or her salary is already paid by the university. Additionally, those graduate students going to put in almost double the hours of full-time engineering staff at a development studio.

      Lastly, I want to point out that professionals with advanced degrees aren't necessarily going to produce better work than students who are still pursuing their degrees. When I was finishing my doctorate, our research institute was routinely on the forefront of our discipline. You could randomly pick any doctoral candidate from our institute and be completely assured that they were the foremost expert in a particular topic area. I would be surprised if anyone from industry, let alone research groups from other top-tier universities, could do better work than us in our respective areas.

    2. Re:why NASA suffers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've never worked in industry, nor have you been a government program manager.

      I've done both (in addition to all that academic PhD stuff).

      What gets done in industry is far more advanced (and far cheaper) than what goes on in academia.

      Anyone who thinks as you do needs to look up the block grant structures from the 80s and also how many scientists NASA actually hires.