{"id":196,"date":"2010-02-09T09:50:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T14:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=196"},"modified":"2010-02-28T11:31:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T16:31:40","slug":"robots-gaining-in-muscles-dexterity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2010\/02\/09\/robots-gaining-in-muscles-dexterity\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots Gaining in ‘Muscles,’ Dexterity"},"content":{"rendered":"

They’re not yet Captain Marvel but, by gosh, they’re getting close, at least in their upper bodies.\u00a0 New industrial robots<\/a> being developed jointly by NASA and General Motors have amazing dexterity in their arms and even their fingers.<\/p>\n

NASA and GM are working together on this next generation of robots because they have applications both for exploring space and building cars.\u00a0 They’re called Robonaut 2, or R2. The original Robonaut is 10 years old now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>R2 looks almost musclebound.\u00a0 It\u00a0can lift<\/a> 20 pounds with each arm, “about four times that of other humanoid robots,” says NASA.\u00a0 Robots have long been used in the auto industry, of course.\u00a0 Perhaps at some point \u00a0Robonaut 2 could be introduced to Ford’s RUTH<\/a>, which does interior work on Ford vehicles, but so far without having a humanoid look.\u00a0 I wonder what that mating might yield?<\/p>\n

R2’s “legs” at this point may be only a pedestal. \u00a0But who knows about future generations and what their builders might need in terms of robotic assistance \u2013 like hiking on the moon or mars.<\/p>\n

Robonaut is an impressive contrast to some earlier industrial robots of which we have first- hand knowledge.\u00a0 In the 1980s and ’90s we were involved in the recovery program for the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear power plant after the 1979 accident there. \u00a0Several robots were developed to deal with cleanup and disassembly tasks in high radiation areas unsafe for human work.\u00a0 Most of those were designed and built at the Robitics Institute at Cernegie Mellon University<\/a> under the direction of the brilliant William (Red) Whittaker, or at his spinoff company RedZone Robotics<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By today’s standards they were rather primitive beasts (see photo nearby).\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Some were quite successful (reactor internals disassembly) while others were largely expensive failures (removing radioactive sludge from the reactor building basement).<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, these and thousands of others are all part of the robot lineage that have taken us to Robonaut 2, RUTH, and more.\u00a0 Like the Apollo astronauts, when Robonaut’s descendants walk on Mars, we wonder if they will use their telescopic vision to look at a pinpoint of light in the heavens and dream of home. \u2013 Doug Bedell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They’re not yet Captain Marvel but, by gosh, they’re getting close, at least in their upper bodies.\u00a0 New industrial robots being developed jointly by NASA and General Motors have amazing dexterity in their arms and even their fingers. NASA and GM are working together on this next generation of robots because they have applications both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}