The former Young Astronaut in me jumped at General Motors' offer to play with the RoboGlove. Who would pass up a chance to flex space-aged superhuman strength? I traveled to GM's Warren, Michigan Technical Center, where its robotics program lives. I didn't know that one of the famed Robonauts would be at GM to greet me along with the engineers who helped build it. The RoboGlove is the offspring of Robonaut (known as R2, naturally) the human safe robot that's been touring space aboard the International Space Station.

Factory workers are about to get super-human strength thanks to Nasa's'Robo-Glove'. The glove helped scientists control Robonaut 2, a humanoid that provided engineering and technical assistance on space mission just like Star Wars' R2-D2. But now it has been given power-boosting technologies thanks to a partnership between General Motors and medical technology company Bioservo, who hope that it will help workers on factory floors. The Robo-Glove wraps around a worker's hand essentially, takes on the hard work for them. An assembly operator in a factory may use 15- to 20 pounds of force to hold a tool during an operation.