BEAMING into space-based robot bodies from Earth could soon be a reality for International Space Station (ISS) workers as Japan plans to send telepresence robots to space – and potentially to the Moon .
This is the end goal of a new partnership between the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and a space robot startup called GITAI.
JAXA and GITAI would like to send a fleet of robots to the ISS by 2020.
The aim is for these robots to conduct menial or dangerous tasks so that human astronauts can concentrate on more important things like scientific discoveries.
GITAI co-founder and CEO Sho Nakanose told IEEE Spectrum: “We want to solve the cost and safety problems of human travel by using robotics technology.”
He added: “The problem of human travel is the most urgent and deep-rooted in the space industry and so we are working on space telepresence robots because they can be made practical faster than autonomous robots.”
GITAI has published videos of vaguely human-like robots doing simple tasks in a lab set up to look like the ISS.
The startup claims that any of the robots it sends to Space will stream high-quality 360-degree video back to Earth with just a 60-millisecond delay.
The companies have said that sending robots to Space will cost just one-tenth of what it costs to send humans to the ISS.
However, space expert humans don’t need to worry about losing their jobs just yet as the physical delay of around 1.2 seconds when robots work on the Moon means that using some semi-autonomous/remotely controlled robots will be necessary for now.
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Do you think its a good idea to send robots to Space? Let us know in the comments…
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