Categories: NASATechnology

Turn on Your Heart Light and Meet NASA’s “Superhero” Robot

Here’s a new DARPA-inspired, NASA-built robot, complete with a glowing NASA Meatball in its chest, reminiscent of ET’s heart light. The robot’s name is Valkyrie and she was created by a team at the Johnson Space Center as part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a contest designed to find the life-saving robot of the future. While NASA’s current robot — Robonaut 2 – is just now getting a pair of legs, “Val” (officially named “R5″ by NASA) is a 1.9 meter tall, 125 kilogram, (6-foot 2-inch, 275-pound) rescue robot that can walk over multiple kinds of terrain, climb a ladder, use tools, and even drive.

According to an extensive article about the new robot in IEEE Spectrum, “This means that Valkyrie has to be capable of operating in the same spaces that a person would operate in, under the control of humans who have only minimal training with robots, which is why the robot’s design is based on a human form.”

Why is NASA building more robots? The thinking is that NASA could send human-like robots to Mars before they send humans. Right now, Valkyrie is not space-rated, but the team at JSC is just getting started.

She’s loaded with cameras, LIDAR, SONAR, is strong and powerful, and is just a great-looking robot.

“We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that was, when you saw it you’d say, wow, that’s awesome.” Nicolaus Radford, Project and Group Lead at the Dexterous Robotics Lab and JSC.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

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