Robonaut

After more than a decade in development it's encouraging to see that Robonaut is going to get some real testing in space.



By now we're quite accustomed to seeing astronauts busying themselves around the international space station. They make it look easy, but this is difficult and dangerous work, with one of the biggest hazards being exposure to solar radiation, which a space suit doesn't provide very much protection against. If a robot had a similar degree of dexterity to a human astronaut it would be far wiser to carry out construction work in space via telerobot. Use of such robots would also make space based construction a far more scalable proposition, since the human operators could potentially be ground based - especially for geostationary construction sites.

As always with telerobots the ergonomic factors will be the decider as to whether Robonaut is a success or failure. Really it needs to be as easy and intuitive as possible to operate the robot, so that the user doesn't quickly become tired, frustrated or disorientated. There may also be Terrestrial applications of this sort of development in terms of things like telerobotic care work or working in hazardous environments (fire fighting or deep sea operations, for example).