Friday, August 26, 2011

R2 says Hello from Outerspace

Earth's International Space Station has awoken their first humanoid Robonaut from his deep space sleep. Isn't that cool? But who or what is R2? I guess Robonaut 2 could be a distant relative of Star Trek's Mr Data who's definitely more than just a machine. While neither of these droids eat, sleep, drink or feel pain, their human-like features and capabilities are a source of great inspiration to us mere mortals.

R2's full name is Robonaut 2 Unit B to be precise but like Data he's got tons of personality despite having no emotions! Strange but true. NASA's white tinman doesn't even talk but since February, R2's already got an enthusiastic 47,000 followers just by tweeting on Twitter! "Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind," was Robonauts first tweet.

Our technological friend will prove really useful when his space legs get him walking. Robonaut 2 was born on May 7th 2010 in his hometown Houston, Texas. Nasa plans to get Tinman souped up for spacewalks assisting his human colleagues during tedious and dangerous missions. Some of R2's extraordinary abilities include tweeting, multi-tasking with the ISS computer consoles, conducting mental and physical tasks using human dexterity to adjust things, performing precise repairs on satellites with the technological toughness to survive the vacuum of space.

Will R2 exceed the sum of his programming?


4 comments:

SpacerGuy said...

Delighted to have you aboard Lola!

Maurice Mitchell said...

That is so cool. At first I thought the title said "R2-D2 says hello from space." This is cooler. Next step: positronic brain.

Belle said...

This was so interesting! They have come a long way in robotics. I wish I had one to clean house and cook dinner, which I find repetitive and boring.

SpacerGuy said...

I like R2 the space grunt because its fearless and obeys the chain of command. Robonaut's a good little soldier.

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