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A versatile robot actor, created in the UK, has beaten off international competition to become the public face of NASA’s world-famous Kennedy Space Centre.
“Robothespian”, first developed in 2006 by Cornish company Engineered Arts, stands five feet nine inches tall, with a full range of upper-body movement and startlingly human eyes.
Space agency NASA has decided to employ the third generation robot to meet and greet visitors at its futuristic Cape Canaveral base, the home of three space shuttles.
The robot has powers of object tracking and speech recognition, enhancing its ability to interact with visitors and guests. Engineered Arts director Will Jackson said: “Robothespian 3 is at the cutting edge of bringing technology into the arts. For him to appear natural and engage the audience his movements need to be as quiet and precisely controlled as possible.”
Robothespian will have to cope with long hours, greeting over 1.5 million visitors per year. Its lifelike movements are powered by a combination of compressed air “muscles” and motors. Maxon motors UK said a mixture of high performance A-max and neodymium magnet-powered RE-max motors are used to give the robot’s hands, arms and torso a performance that is both reliable and realistic.
Although Robothespian will be new to NASA, its Maxon motors will not; 78 brushed RE motors are currently on the surface of Mars, powering key functions on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers that have so far exceeded their anticipated lifespan by almost seven years.
Engineered Arts has already started work on a further 20 Robothespians, which will be completed by March 2011, as well as other robots which are being produced for research purposes.
Maxon motor senior sales engineer Ian Bell says: “Robothespian will be a great addition to the Space Centre, and Engineered Arts deserves every credit, as a growing UK company, for winning such a high-profile order against strong, worldwide competition.”
