an imaginative world they've come in all
shapes and sizes a better not I suppose
it doesn't sink in let's go back at Emma
but most present-day robots have far
less personality than their fictional
counterparts in a kind of mechanical
ballet these computer controls
industrial automaton tirelessly go about
their business often performing tasks
too dangerous or monotonous for human
workers
nASA has been involved in robotics
research for years developing
sophisticated vision systems and sensors
today at the Marshall Space Flight
Center in Alabama robots do a variety of
jobs including blasting layers of old
thermal protection material from the
shuttles external tanks but now
researchers at Marshall are focusing
their attention on using computerized
machines like these elsewhere in space
one robotic device the shuttles remote
manipulator arm has already made its
mark doing everything from dropping off
scientific payloads to serving as a
platform for astronauts outside the
shuttle but even with the help of the
arm working in space is difficult one
application that holds a lot of promise
for robotic workers is the retrieval and
repair of satellites shuttle crews have
demonstrated that they can make
successful service calls on disabled
spacecraft but it's not easy this is
where the orbital maneuvering vehicle or
omv under study at Marshall would be
extremely useful essentially a large
space truck the omv could fly away from
the shuttle rendezvous with the disabled
satellite and bring it back for repair
onboard cameras allow an operator to
control it from inside the mothership
the people at Marshall are also working
on robotic devices that could repair a
satellite in orbit using sophisticated
claws these machines change out
defective parts
advanced robots could be a great help in
assembling this country space station
and once the space station is up and
running robots will continue to play an
important role in this and other NASA
projects in the future