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" Robonaut 2, delivered to the International Space Station back in February, is part experiment and part butler\u2014a research project aimed to find out the viability of a robotic helper in space. &amp;quot;I always caution people, this is an engineering research experiment, this isn&amp;#039;t a space station system yet,&amp;quot; deputy project manager Nic Radford says. Nevertheless, once it&amp;#039;s fully operational, Robonaut 2 will be able to perform some impressive feats, such as grappling its way around the ISS and learning on the job.  Warming Up Before Robonaut can do anything on the space station, NASA engineers must first calibrate and adapt the robot&amp;#039;s movements to the zero-gravity environment. On Earth, Robonaut 2&amp;#039;s movements were governed by a gravity compensation system: Whenever the robot moved its arm, gravity was taken into account so that it moved with the proper force and effort, Radford explains. &amp;quot;Now that you don&amp;#039;t have gravity, there is no weight on the arm,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Now that the robot moves with less effort, we need to refine that effort.&amp;quot; This step simply ensures that Robonaut 2 doesn&amp;#039;t go to push a button and put a hole through some expensive equipment. Learning on the Job With the diagnostics out of the way, early next year the team plans to put Robonaut 2 into action by giving it basic tasks such as cleaning handrails and monitoring the space station&amp;#039;s orbital velocity. This stage is also meant to test what Radford calls Robonaut 2&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;emergent behaviors.&amp;quot; Through its visual processors and 350 force and torque sensors, Robonaut 2 will be able to detect if a switch has been flipped or a bolt has been properly tightened. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s not an artificially intelligent robot, but he has the ability to do a task in an intelligent way, where if he misses or if he doesn&amp;#039;t succeed, the robot understands to retry or to adjust its actions,&amp;quot; Radford says.  Over time, Robonaut 2 will accrue knowledge of its tasks to improve its performance. And it will be able to apply that knowledge to similar tasks\u2014it can learn new tasks without being programmed. &amp;quot;It will be able to say, &amp;#039;Hey, I see that button that&amp;#039;s just slightly different than the one I knew before, but I can operate this one too,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Radford says. Stretching Its Legs Once Robonaut 2 has shown it can perform assigned tasks, researchers will give it the essential next step toward autonomy: the ability to navigate the space station on its own. Eighteen months from now, NASA plans to send a pair of legs for Robonaut 2 up to the ISS onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Always anchored to the station, Robotnaut&amp;#039;s two legs will act more like arms, moving the bot about the station by grappling from handrail to handrail, not unlike the way a monkey moves through the trees. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not going to be floating around the space station like how people travel,&amp;quot; explains Radford. &amp;quot;We want the conditions to always remain controlled and safe.&amp;quot;  The robot will move along general preprogrammed paths, but it will figure out how to actually navigate those paths. &amp;quot;It determines, in real time, the best way to grapple something,&amp;quot; says Radford. It also won&amp;#039;t need to bump into things to learn its way, like a Roomba does. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;#039;Hey, something just floated by\u2014I need to not run into it.&amp;quot; Robonaut 2&amp;#039;s legs will, however, leave its two arms free to carry loads of up to 40 pounds. A Long Way from Data Robonaut 2 certainly has a sci-fi look about it, but Radford insists that robot helpers will have a very real place among ISS and future space-faring crews. &amp;quot;If you can automate a task, such as going around and cleaning handrails, that would be incredibly beneficial to the crew,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;[Astronanuts] absolutely have their day packed from the minute they wake up until they go to bed. If Robonaut can provide just an hour&amp;#039;s worth of relief to the crew doing something they don&amp;#039;t want to do, that would make it worth it right there.&amp;quot;  But Radford&amp;#039;s not getting ahead of himself. &amp;quot;We are so far from Data, it&amp;#039;s not even funny,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You have to take those first few steps, and Robonaut represents those first steps.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a11847/robonaut-2-the-space-stations-robot-butler-is-almost-ready/>