They come from NASA Ames in Mountain View (not far from my home). I'm very fond of NASA Ames, lots of cool things there, such as NASA's exobiology unit.
There are going to be three of these robots initially. They have 'bee' names: Honey, Bumble and Queen. They are cubical, designed for weightlessness and are propelled by fans. They will come equipped with a single arm each and can be fitted with specialized appendages for specific tasks. They are designed to accept lots of software upgrades, so that the engineers can continually tinker with them. They can be commanded by astronauts on the space station, mission control in Houston, or can operate autonomously. There will be a wall-charger installed on the wall of the space station and the robots can find it and plug themselves in whenever they are hungry. (Diagram from NASA.)
See them in action in a NASA video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...8WYaaGf2f8
There are going to be three of these robots initially. They have 'bee' names: Honey, Bumble and Queen. They are cubical, designed for weightlessness and are propelled by fans. They will come equipped with a single arm each and can be fitted with specialized appendages for specific tasks. They are designed to accept lots of software upgrades, so that the engineers can continually tinker with them. They can be commanded by astronauts on the space station, mission control in Houston, or can operate autonomously. There will be a wall-charger installed on the wall of the space station and the robots can find it and plug themselves in whenever they are hungry. (Diagram from NASA.)
See them in action in a NASA video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...8WYaaGf2f8