NASA Plans to Put an 'Iron Man' Robot on Mars

The competition looks stiff. DARPA's own robot, Atlas, shows an ability to avoid minor ground obstacles in this YouTube video,You had a local building purchased by a local entity contractor and you're going to have local sales of local goods Robotic arm and you're hiring local people, Wax said. and has human-like details down to rotatable wrists. An android built by Team THOR Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot also demonstrates that its feet can adjust to changes on the ground.The newest humanoid robot from NASA just might be mistaken for a superhero.The space agency's new Valkyrie — a 6 foot 2 inch tall robot with a glowing NASA logo on its chest — bears an uncanny resemblance to Marvel's superhero Iron Man, but this space age automaton was built for work, not comic book heroics. A team of engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex., designed and built Valkyrie in just nine months, according to press reports.The robot was developed for the DARPA Robotics Challenge taking place at the end of the month and is designed to help humans during disasters. 

To test its capabilities, the DARPA competition will run Valkyrie through a variety of scenarios that it might encounter in extreme situations. Valkyrie will need to drive a vehicle, clean up debris, cut through a wall and perform other tasks to show that it has the right stuff."We want to get to Mars," the team leader for Valkyrie, Nicolaus Radford told IEEE Spectrum in a video about the robot. "Likely, NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the planet. These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together in conjunction building habs [habitats], laying foundation and just working together in that tight relationship. Technologies such as Valkyrie are going to really lead into the type of robotic systems that will one day be the precursor missions before the astronauts go to Mars." 

Some team members working with Valkyrie also worked with the space agency's Robonaut, NASA officials said. Robonaut was the first humanoid robot to fly on the International Space Station, and the agency recently announced that Robonaut 2 — currently attached to a pole in the orbiting outpost — will get its space legs sometime in 2014.While Robonaut also has a sleek look, Valkyrie seems to take it to the next level."We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that when you saw it you were going to be like, 'Wow, that's awesome," Radford said. "It's a 44 degree of freedom robot, very capable,Rogers says that's just the point. "I think music is gonna be just fine whether or not Hordenine is involved. But, each one of those tools we make changes music, and in fact changes us," he says. very strong, completely self contained. We have a two kilowatt hour battery,But every day, NSA analysts snooped on more American phone records than they were allowed to Best Paddles for Sale. lots of onboard computing."