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| Named Fedor, the robot is the first ever sent up by Russia |
Russia on Thursday launched an unmanned rocket carrying a life-size humanoid robot that will spend 10 days learning to assist astronauts on the International Space Station.
Named
Fedor, short for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research, the robot is
the first ever sent up by Russia.
Fedor
blasted off in a Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft at 6:38 am Moscow time (0338 GMT) from
Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz is set to dock with the
space station on Saturday and stay till September 7.
Soyuz ships
are normally manned on such trips, but on Thursday no humans are travelling in
order to test a new emergency rescue system.
Instead of
cosmonauts, Fedor, also known as Skybot F850, was strapped into a specially
adapted pilot's seat, with a small Russian flag in hand.
"Let's
go. Let's go," the robot was heard saying during launch, repeating the
famous phrase used by first man in space Yuri Gagarin.
The silvery
anthropomorphic robot stands 1.80 metres (5 foot 11 inches) tall and weighs 160
kilogrammes (353 pounds).
Fedor has
Instagram and Twitter accounts with posts saying it is learning new skills such
as opening a bottle of water. In the station, it will trial those manual skills
in very low gravity.
"That's
connecting and disconnecting electric cables (and) using standard items, from a
screwdriver and a spanner to a fire extinguisher," the Russian space
agency's director for prospective programmes and science, Alexander Bloshenko,
said in televised comments ahead of the launch.
"The
first stage of in-flight experiments went according to the flight plan,"
the robot tweeted after reaching orbit.
Fedor
copies human movements, a key skill that allows it to remotely help astronauts
or even people on Earth to carry out tasks while the humans are strapped into
an exoskeleton.
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Fedor has
Instagram and Twitter accounts
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Such robots
will eventually carry out dangerous operations such as space walks, Bloshenko
told the state news agency RIA Novosti.
On the
website of one of the state backers of the project, the Foundation of Advanced
Research Projects, Fedor is described as potentially useful on Earth for
working in high radiation environments, demining and tricky rescue missions.
Though
initially developed for the emergencies ministry, Fedor can also be seen
shooting at targets from two handguns in a video posted by Russian space agency
chief Dmitry Rogozin.
On board,
the robot will perform tasks supervised by Russian cosmonaut Alexander
Skvortsov, who joined the ISS in July and will wear an exoskeleton and
augmented reality glasses in a series of experiments later this month.
Since Fedor
is not trained to grab space station handles to move about in microgravity
conditions, its legs will be immobilised on the space station, Bloshenko said.
Fedor not
the first
Space
agency chief Rogozin showed pictures of the robot to President Vladimir Putin
this month, saying it will be "an assistant to the crew".
"In
the future we plan that this machine will also help us conquer deep
space," he added.
Russian
media speculated that Fedor-like robots will be used in Russia's Moon
programme.
Fedor is
not the first robot to go into space.
In 2011,
NASA sent up Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot developed with General Motors that
had a similar aim of working in high-risk environments.
It was
flown back to Earth in 2018 after experiencing technical problems.
In 2013,
Japan sent up a small robot called Kirobo along with the ISS's first Japanese
space commander. Developed with Toyota, it was able to hold conversations --
albeit only in Japanese.
Named
Fedor, the robot is the first ever sent up by Russia
Fedor has
Instagram and Twitter accounts.
#UPDATE An unmanned spacecraft carrying Russia's first humanoid robot to be sent into orbit successfully docks @Space_Station following a failed attempt over the weekend https://t.co/7Ygb8MwMuf pic.twitter.com/V8t8YFnWd2— AFP news agency (@AFP) 27 augustus 2019
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