Have robots got the right stuff? We'll soon find out, as NASA has announced that one of the last flights of the space shuttle will carry a humanoid robot, Robonaut 2, up to the International Space Station.
The two-armed 'bot is the result of a venture by NASA and General Motors, and will help the researchers involved identify in what ways a robot could be a help to human explorers in space. Before it gets to go on its first space walk, however, it'll be monitored to see how well it deals with weightlessness [DVICE]
. The robot isn't much more than 300 pounds of torso, head, and arms, with wheels for locomotion rather than humanoid legs. But NASA hopes it could one day work alongside human astronauts, perhaps helping them during spacewalks. While we've blasted plenty of unmanned explorers into space, this will be first largely humanoid robot to ...
