NASA's Valkyrie robot is a six-foot 'superhero'


Recommended Posts

NASA has created a robot for DARPA's upcoming Robotics Challenge Trials. The Valkyrie is a 6-foot-2-inch humanoid machine with detachable arms, sonar sensors, mounted cameras, and a glowing Tony Stark-esque circle in the middle of its chest. The space agency says it's mobile and dexterous enough to enter disaster zones to provide search and rescue functions.

Project and group lead for NASA JSC's Dextrous Robotics Lab, Nicolaus Radford, tells IEEE Spectrum that Valkyrie was designed specifically for the DARPA competition. Strong legs mean the robot's capable of moving around "degraded environments" typical of disaster-stricken areas, and cameras mounted on its head, body, forearms, knees, and feet, allow it to provide visual information back to its handlers. Extra data can be provided by the robot's sonar and lidar units. Unlike DARPA's own Atlas robot, Valkyrie doesn't require a tether, running instead on a 2kWh battery stored on the machine's back.

 

Valkyrie builds on the space agency's previous humanoid robot, Robonaut, currently in orbit around the Earth in the International Space Station. Robonaut, built to work in zero-gravity environments, was the size and shape of a bulky humanoid torso. Valkyrie's powerful legs and lighter frame make it better adapted for operating on Earth.

 

 

more & video

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DARPA Robotics Challenge site, with details about the team's etc.

http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/

This follows in the footsteps of the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges, which lead to advances being used in the coming generations of self driving cars.

If this challenge does as well as the autonomous car challenges we may have autonomous robots running around in a decade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If this challenge does as well as the autonomous car challenges we may have autonomous robots running around in a decade.

 

If not sooner. They are making amazing advancements in robotics these days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Johnson Space Center's $3M Valkyrie "female" robot "superhero" was a superZERO in the DARPA Challenge, as in Valkyrie scored 0 points - tied with 2 other bots for last place.

Someone at NASA JSC is probably not only in trouble for their placement but also because NASA HQ specifically told them to build a gender neutral robot. This is a problem because its feminine torso's "breasts," being inflexible unlike its biological counterparts, limited its arm motion when reaching across its torso.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Robosimian scored 14 points and placed 5th.

Results -

http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wierd design ........why would you want all those cameras on a Droid?

Spatial awareness so it does randomly knock out people and stuff around it, this isn't your average roomba.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.