A NASA robot that's been waiting patiently in the International Space Station since February was finally powered up yesterday. The Robonaut 2 Helper Droid, or R2 (no relation to D2) is the first humanoid robot in space. The hope is that it will eventually serve as a helper to astronauts. NASA operators from Mission Control in Houston cheered after they awakened R2 remotely. "Robonaut behaved himself," deputy project manager Nicolaus Radford told the Washington Post. "Oh, Robonaut definitely got an 'A.' He won't be held back a grade, if that's what you want to know." R2 is not only good in school, he/she is unsurprisingly quite tech-savvy and very active on Twitter. R2 has already send thousands of tweets to its 37,000 plus followers from its @AstroRobonaut account. Once R2 was up and running, it tweeted, "Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind." The 3 foot 4 inch robot then tweeted a photo of the space station writing, "This is what I see right now. Sure wish I could move my head and look around." Though R2 was awakened this week, it won't be able to turn its head or move its arms until next week. Do you think NASA should be spending money developing the new 'bot?
Friday, August 26, 2011
NASA robot
A NASA robot that's been waiting patiently in the International Space Station since February was finally powered up yesterday. The Robonaut 2 Helper Droid, or R2 (no relation to D2) is the first humanoid robot in space. The hope is that it will eventually serve as a helper to astronauts. NASA operators from Mission Control in Houston cheered after they awakened R2 remotely. "Robonaut behaved himself," deputy project manager Nicolaus Radford told the Washington Post. "Oh, Robonaut definitely got an 'A.' He won't be held back a grade, if that's what you want to know." R2 is not only good in school, he/she is unsurprisingly quite tech-savvy and very active on Twitter. R2 has already send thousands of tweets to its 37,000 plus followers from its @AstroRobonaut account. Once R2 was up and running, it tweeted, "Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind." The 3 foot 4 inch robot then tweeted a photo of the space station writing, "This is what I see right now. Sure wish I could move my head and look around." Though R2 was awakened this week, it won't be able to turn its head or move its arms until next week. Do you think NASA should be spending money developing the new 'bot?
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