Robonaut 2 Ready For Trip To ISS Next Week

It sounds strange for a carmaker and NASA to be working together on a robot, but GM and NASA have been doing that for a long time with a robot called Robonaut 2 or R2. R2 was boxed up back in August for his first mission to the ISS aboard the space shuttle and that mission is set to kick off next week.

R2 will head to the stars aboard the Discovery for his first real work assignment. The development of R2 began back in 2007 and R2 is intended to assist astronauts as they work on the ISS. The Discovery is set to launch on November 1.

GM has looked at the development of R2 as a way to invent and prefect new technologies that will help to make vehicles safer. Sensors developed for the R2 project will eventually be used to make the workplace safer and current vehicles are already using some of the sensor tech for things like lane departure warnings, blind zone alerts, and adaptive cruise control.