At a space industry conference last week, Russian officials announced that their version of Robonaut, the SAR-400, is currently undergoing testing at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre Research Institute, and will be making its way to the International Space Station (ISS) within just a few years.
In many ways, the SAR-400 is a lot like the NASA/GM Robonaut 2 that we’ve come to know and love. It’s not intended to be autonomous (yet), but is instead teleoperated from the ground. Users put on gloves that directly control the robot’s arms and hands, while also providing real-time force feedback. On Earth, it can lift up to 10 kilograms, and presumably in space, it can lift things that weigh a lot more. SAR-400 will be able to work outside the ISS, too.
via IEEE Spectrum
