Valkyrie NASA's Superhero Robot

It’s always exciting when a new robot arrives in your lab. Usually, the more expensive the robot is, the more exciting it is. With the possible exception of Boston Dynamics’ ATLAS, NASA’s Valkyrie has got to be one of the most expensive humanoid robots ever made, and last year, NASA promised to give away (or, at least, lend) three of them to universities in the hope that Valkyrie will learn some new skills.

Within the last few weeks, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, which teamed up with Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., took delivery of their fancy new robot, as did MIT and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. We talked to Holly Yanco at UMass Lowell and Taskin Padir at Northeastern, along with Sethu Vijayakumar and Maurice Fallon at Edinburgh, and Russ Tedrake at MIT, about what it’s like to have a smokin’ hot space robot show up on your doorstep in a bunch of pieces. We also asked them what they’ve told NASA that they’re going to do with it, and what they actually plan to do with it. NASA, you will be happy to hear that these last two things are only slightly different.