Moscow: An unmanned rocket carrying a life-size humanoid robot was launched by Russia on Thursday and will be spending 10 days learning to assist astronauts on the International Space Station. The robot has been named Fedor, for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research with identification number Skybot F850.
This is the first-ever Robot sent up by Russia.
Fedor was launched from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is expected to arrive at the station on Saturday.
During its 10 days at the ISS, Fedor will learn new skills such as “connecting and disconnecting electric cables, using standard items from a screwdriver and a spanner to a fire extinguisher,” said Alexander Bloshenko, the Russian space agency’s director for prospective programmes and science.
The silvery anthropomorphic robot stands 1.80 metres (5 foot 11 inches) tall and weighs 160 kilograms (353 pounds).
Fedor can copy human movements which allow it to remotely help astronauts or even people on Earth carry out tasks while they are strapped into an exoskeleton. Such robots gradually will carry out highly risky operations such as spacewalks, said Bloshenko.
Earlier in 2011, NASA sent up Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot developed with General Motors and a similar aim of working in high-risk environments. But in 2018, it flew back to Earth due to technical problems. Japan had also sent a robot to the ISS in 2013.
