'Star Wars' droids point the way to NASA repair robots

NASA's Valkyrie robot holds a little "Star Wars" BB-8. The "Star Wars" robots R2-D2 and BB-8 are the droids that NASA is looking for -- "astromechs" that can help repair spaceships on the fly, a NASA robotics engineer says. Future NASA robots might resemble humanoid droids such as C-3PO and K-2SO from the waist up, but have giant mechanical spidery legs from the waist down, the engineer added in a new piece for the journal Science Robotics. For more than 20 years, NASA has sought to develop robot assistants for astronauts. So far, they have developed three droids.