Sensational headlines aside, I was excited to read that the European Space Agency’s Eurobot passed its weightless environments test. Now, it is that much closer to joining its human counterparts at the International Space Station to support astronauts by holding things, putting things away, getting things out, and holding things. Not too deep a talent set, there, but nonetheless valuable in a weightless environment. Eurobot has three arms about the size of a human being’s, but they are articulated in seven places to allow it to move and pivot in ways that we cannot, unless you are an adherent of bikram yoga or some such.
My question is, shouldn’t we have had robots doing cool things in space like thirty years ago? What happened? Somewhere along the line the various space agencies totally let down the science fiction infused dreams of anybody born between WWII and 1985. Penalties should be assessed.
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