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General Motors and NASA have a long history of working together going back to the original
Lunar Rover.
And it would seemed like a natural fit for the General Motors Corporation and NASA to
work together on the development of the next generation of robots-- Robonaut.
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The current Robonaut was developed as a result of a partnership between NASA Johnson Space
Center and General Motors.
So General Motors sent down a team of engineers to works side-by-side with the NASA engineers
developing and assembling, designing, and building the current model of Robonaut R2.
General Motors and NASA began working on the current Robonaut about 3 years ago, The relationship
has been fantastic.
The partnership has been fantastic and if you see from the robot.
The robot is a pretty amazing device.
Starting with R1, we went after both the hands and arms, that give you a workspace and the
dexterity that is very similar to humans.
When we went to R2, we had increased that, we increased the speed in which we could perform
tasks and we had increased the level of dexterity, so that we could perform more tasks than the
original R1 can.
From General Motors' perspective, we want to be able to automate tasks that are very
repetitious, dull, or ergonomically challenging for our operators.
And those requirements are very similar to some of the tasks that NASA would like to
be able to automate, to help an astronaut.
So from that perspective, we're looking at using robots and automation to support our
operators, to support our people from doing the work, doing the things that are not as
value added for the operators.
Both organizations are looking for ways, to add technologies to both of our toolkits,
so that both Space Mission,and Assemby plants can be more efficient.
One of GM's core goals is to lead and advance technologies and quality, including the world's
best vehicles.
The partnership with NASA and the development of R2 provide those innovative technologies
that would help us achieve those goals, in both our plans and our product.
The goal here is that there are many tasks than can be more officially offloaded to robots.
For example in Space, when astronauts perform tasks, there's a lot of setup before the task
is actually started and a lot of tarry down after its done quickly on Space Station, setting
up the tools, setting up the right equipment.
If a robot can perform that task.
It allows the crew person to be much more efficient doing the things that only a crew
person can do.
Partnership between NASA and GM had been a fantastic one, and it has resulted in benefits
that we haven't predicted when we first started...
Both sides are looking for an effective and efficient a robotic system is possible.
But what has also been amazing is the application overlap between the two groups.
Many things that we have to do in Space that humans have to do are in many ways similar
to the complexities to the situation when you're building a car.
Both are complex activities.
And we have found interesting overlap that benefited both.
General Motors are all about safer vehicles and safer plans.
The technologies being developed in R2 will help our engineers develop advanced vehicle
safety systems that will be used in our future products.
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