Gadgetory

from landing a rover on Mars to researching how to capture and mine asteroids NASA is innovating in ways that just a few years ago were unimaginable I visited Johnson Space Center for a tour of their robotics lab where engineers are designing robots to be used in the next generation of space travel meet Robonaut he has a head torso to arms he's 300 pounds and a version of him is currently on the space station assisting astronaut versus a first for NASA I'm gonna meet him right now so what are the kinds of things that you're hoping to have it be able to do in the future it's the ultimate goal is for it to be outside the space station helping the crew with things like worksite setup what will make this possible is a complex set of systems inside the robot all the motors for the hand are actually back here in the forearm and they actually pull and push on content ins and tight mystically to be able to move each of the finger joint Wow so that's how this motion is actually being created so that works basically just like the muscle systems above it's been yeah it's very similar yeah and we've got four sensors also on all those tenants so they can detect how much force were pulling on with the fingers we could control the grip strength here is Robonaut s-- hand with the skin off it's pretty awesome if not a little creepy if you've seen terminator what's inside the the chest torso area sure so robots brain is not in said is actually right here in the chest so we've got a computer cage in here that does all the heavy duty processing so when will he be programmed to feel loved it's on the list Robonaut can do a surprising number of things it can shake hands it can use a drill and it can even lift weights so I hear that Robonaut is a champion weightlifter it's pretty good can we have them a one on one sure absolutely lots versus humans for the fate of humanity all right I can do that much he likes slow control that's the way to maximize your pump I like your style all right point point maid Ramona you have this round would you care for a game of chess that's amazing I feel like a battle mech or Iron Man Robonaut is just one way NASA is using robotics to assist with necessary human functions the other is with this exoskeleton it weighs 57 pounds and it uses robotics to give you added movement collect data and give you potentially superhuman strength NASA wants astronauts to be able to wear suits like this while in space possibly giving them extra stamina and strength I wish I could convey to you exactly how I feel the words fail me even though the motors aren't operational I'm not getting the added strength and benefit that these are eventually going to give I feel like if I jumped I would leap out of this building right now it's an incredible feeling yeah when the motors are powered when they are turned on it augmented our strength and it augments their ability so right now there are four degrees of freedom four active degrees of freedom at the hips and the knees so that you can feel that gear in here and your other degrees of freedom right what is all this stuff so what you have here in the backpack is your main brain stem computer okay so if you think about it you have one main computer that then does distributing computing throughout each of the joints well you could imagine it replacing the need for forklifts or you know just doing sort of mundane tasks where you could lift and move things than normal humans could be you know people talk about this is the decade of the exoskeleton and it's just gonna get lighter and smaller from here Wow so you're saying this is the decade of the exoskeleton so by the end of this decade I'm gonna have one of these is what you're promising me III think that is very pop of course you can see where all this research is headed first NASA then someday who knows maybe we'll all be wearing robotic suits can you say Iron Man