NASA Valkyrie Interactive Touchscreen Experience

NASA Valkyrie is one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world

Standing 1.8 m tall and weighing in 125 kg, The NASA Valkyrie is one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world, manufactured by NASA. It is hoped that one day, robots like the NASA Valkyrie will be sent to Mars or other planets for ‘pre-deployment missions’ to prepare habitats and work environments for human missions.

The Valkyrie robot at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics is the only Valkyrie outside of the USA. Researchers here at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics are developing the artificial intelligence it needs to operate autonomously in cluttered environments.

This state-of-the-art robot has 44 motorised joints and is powered by two Intel Core i7 computers, capable of sending and receiving over 500 signals per second in order to keep Valkyrie balanced on two feet and make sense of the environment around by processing signals from its stereo camera and various other sensors so that it can carry out its tasks.

In collaboration with the Edinburgh and South-East City Region Deal and its Data Driven Innovation Programme, the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics created a virtual interactive touchscreen experience of the NASA Valkyrie robot, which was first unveiled at the National Museum of Scotland’s Robots Exhibition in January 2019. The exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland was a great success, which attracted over 60,000 visitors and received excellent reviews.

It was a complete revelation to us that an AI institute of such eminence existed here in Edinburgh - and one that is clearly a world leader if it is working with Nasa on the software for the robots which will be the forerunners of the humans venturing to settle on Mars. This is indeed, along with NMS itself, another organisation of which Scotland can be very proud indeed!

Now, the NASA Valkyrie interactive touchscreen experience will be on permanent display in the Bayes Centre, the University of Edinburgh.