Robonaut 2, left, and unidentified person who probably feels silly

It ain’t science, but it is interesting engineering. Robonaut 2, a humanoid “robot”  flown up to the International Space Station in February, has been powered up and is being checked out. Why it even sends tweets. (@astrorobonaut)

One said, ”Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind.”

So far the gizmo, developed jointly by NASA and GM, has nothing below the belt, but NASA says legs are planned to help it get around the station. They’ll go up in 2013. Wouldn’t two arms be enough? Or are they taking the humanoid part too seriously?

And can we really call it a robot? That term, which originally referred to devices that operated autonomously, is being applied to anything that is merely remote controlled. R2 (yes, NASA calls it that) is operated by a guy in Houston. For eyes, it has cameras that give him a view.

Marcia Dunn of the AP as picked up by Australia’s Herald Sun. In about a week, she writes, Houston will fire up R2′s fingers. Either NASA doesn’t want to rush things, or the station crew has better things to do than mess with the contraption.

Another take: Leslie Horn at PC Magazine.

-Boyce Rensberger

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 at 11:51 am and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.