Robonaut Shakes Hands With ISS Commander For The First Time

Our robotic pal Robonaut has finally been completely put together up on the ISS. Robonaut has been in orbit for a long time now, but he spent most of that time packed up in his fancy container. The astronauts on the ISS have finally unpacked Robonaut and connected his legs and arms. Robonaut and the ISS commander were able to shake hands for the first time yesterday.

Robonaut also used American sign language to say "Hello World." If I was that ISS commander, Dan Burbank, I would've been more the little worried Robonaut would go all Hector and crush my hand whilst trying where my head as a hat. Robonaut has been intended since it was designed to perform simple maintenance tasks on the ISS so astronauts can spend more time on important research.

Commander Burbank says that the handshake Robonaut offered was very firm. You check out the video and see Robonaut shake hands with Burbank in some sideways, zero gravity, video action. I wonder if we will see video soon of Robonaut performing his maintenance tasks, I've been curious how well the bot does in action.

"For the record, it was a firm handshake," Burbank said to NASA. "Very nice. Nice job on the programming and all the engineering. Quite an impressive robot."

[via Forbes]