List of NASA robots

NASA has made various robotic devices to aid, augment, or substitute for astronauts in order to do difficult or rote tasks such as repairs in dangerous environments (such as those with radiation or micrometeorite risks), routine procedures (video capture), etc.

Robonaut is a joint DARPA–NASA project designed to create a humanoid robot which can function as an equivalent to humans during the 1970s and exploration.

While not all human range of motion and sensitivity has been duplicated, the robot's hand has fourteen degrees of freedom and uses touch sensors at the tips of its fingers.

The little robot will then drive to a processing plant where the lunar soil could be chemically broken down and converted into rocket fuel, water or breathing air for astronauts working on the moon and even possibly Mars.

[3] Spidernaut is an arachnid-inspired Extra Vehicular Robot (EVR) that is being designed by a NASA for construction, maintenance, and repair projects in future space missions that would be too difficult or too dangerous for a human.

With the robot's final weight of nearly 600 pounds evenly spread out across its eight legs, Spidernaut will be able to climb across many surfaces, including solar panels and the exterior of spacecraft without causing any damage.

NASA has also begun experimenting with a "web" like cable deployment system that would allow the robot to climb and hang above structures that cannot support even light forces.

[4][5] ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) is a six-limbed robotic lunar rover test-bed that is being developed in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at California Institute of Technology.

[6][7] Dextre is a two armed robot, or telemanipulator, which is part of the Mobile Servicing System on the International Space Station (ISS).

While inside a space station three spheres will be given a set of instructions such as an autonomous rendezvous and docking maneuver.

The results from the sphere testing will be applied to satellite servicing, vehicle assembly, and future space craft that will be designed to fly in a formation.

However unlike the previous generation the Curiosity contains an entire inboard laboratory for analyzing the soil and rocks on Mars.

NASA engineered the Curiosity to be capable of rolling over obstacles up to 65 centimeters high and traverse up to about 200 meters per day on Martian terrain.