NASA astronaut Steve Swanson poses with the robot Robonaut 2 on the International Space Station after completing an upgrade that gave the robot legs. | Credit: NASA/Steve Swanson via InstagramLook out, astronauts – your companion robot on the International Space Station is now mobile! NASA’s Robonaut 2 has received a set of legs that will help it move around the station, and will eventually enable the bot to work on repairs both inside and outside the orbiting outpost.
NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who commanded the station’s Expedition 40 crew, helped attach the appendages to the humanoid robot in late August before returning to Earth last week. The legs will help the robot move around the space station to complete simple tasks. Later this year, after a few changes to its upper body, later this year, Robonaut 2 will use its new legsto venture outside for its first spacewalk as well.
“You can only do so much if you’re fixed on a stanchion, which is what we’ve been on for the past couple of years,” Ron Diftler, principal investigator for the Robonaut project, said in a televised interview on NASA Television. “With the addition of legs, we’ll be able to go mobile.” [See photos of NASA’s Robonaut 2 humanoid robot]
“In space, you don’t use your human legs in the way you use them on the ground,” Diftler said. “We didn’t adhere to the human form because it didn’t make any sense.”NASA researchers did not even have legs in mind when they sent Robonaut 2 to the space station in 2011, but it was possible to add the appendages with some upgrades to the robot’s wiring and computer systems.”
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