Robowflex is a software library for robot motion planning in industrial and research applications, leveraging the popular MoveIt library and Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware. Robowflex provides an augmented API for crafting and manipulating motion planning queries within a single program, making motion planning with MoveIt easy. Robowflex's high-level API simplifies many common use-cases while still providing low-level access to the MoveIt library when needed. Robowflex is particularly useful for 1) developing new motion planners, 2) evaluating motion planners, and 3) complex problems that use motion planning as a subroutine (e.g., task and motion planning). Robowflex also provides visualization capabilities, integrations to other robotics libraries (e.g., DART and Tesseract), and is complementary to other robotics packages. With our library, the user does not need to be an expert at ROS or MoveIt to set up motion planning queries, extract information from results, and directly interface with a variety of software components. We demonstrate its efficacy through several example use-cases.

Cobots or collaborative robots are robots that are built for direct contact and interaction with humans like a robot dog or a robotic vacuum. There have been a surprising amount of cobots in space. CIMON was made by IBM, AIRBUS and the DLR (German Aerospace Center). The original CIMON was first proposed in 2016 and went to the ISS in 2018 for 14 months. CIMON 2 went up to the ISS on December 5th, 2019 and it is scheduled to stay there for 3 years.

ESA's SpaceBok robot is designed to walk, hop, and run in low-gravity environments. From free-flying droids to humanoids, from crawlers to inflatable torsos, space robots of myriad types are now being considered for missions in low Earth orbit, on interplanetary spacecraft, and on other worlds. It might sound like a prop list from a Star Wars movie, but space agencies and their contractors are developing a panoply of robotic assistants with a serious aim in mind: to boost the productivity and safety of astronauts. The idea behind robot assistants is multifaceted: one aim is to offload time-consuming repetitive tasks like space station cleaning and inventory making from crew members to free-flying or humanoid robots. Ground robots controlled from, say, spacecraft orbiting the Moon or Mars could construct human habitats ahead of a landing, or perform reconnaissance ahead of human exploration missions.

Astronauts need a lot of help from robots. Whether it's the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) or future recruits on missions exploring the depths of the Solar System, robots help us to complete tasks beyond our human capabilities. But what type of robots are best suited for these cosmic jobs? One NASA engineer thinks that we should turn to Star Wars for inspiration. In the popular saga, Astromechs are repair droids that act as autonomous mechanics aboard ships. They are also capable of fighting, piloting spacecraft, and just about everything else.

The International Space Station (ISS) is slated to get a new robot, and you have a chance to help design it. NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) has teamed up with work-for-hire site Freelancer.com on the Astrobee, a free-flying robot currently under development. The project will involve designing concepts for a robotic arm for the Astrobee. NASA and Freelancer will be crowdsourcing designs from the site's 17 million freelancers around the world. AI might be a hot topic but you'll still need to justify those projects.

He might look like an extra member of Daft Punk, but Russia's robot humanoid is set to be joining astronauts aboard the International Space Station as early as next year. Scientists at the Gagarin Cosmonauts' Training Centre in Star City Centre, just outside Moscow, have shown off their creation, called SAR-401. Russia is working on its own version of Nasa's Robonaut, which is already lending a hand on the International Space Station – so the two robots might work together in the future. Russia's SAR-401robot humanoid could be joining astronauts aboard the International Space Station as early as next year A slightly earlier model called SAR-400 is scheduled to be blasted into space in 2014. Russia's robonaut is similar to Nasa's as it is not designed to be completely autonomous but is operated remotely from the ground, Spectrum reported.

How do you send a robot to space? When Robonaut 2 heads to the International Space Station this fall, it won't be strapped into a seat like its astronaut companions. Instead, it will be carefully packed inside dense foam and an aluminum frame that's specially designed to withstand the intense vibrations and gravity forces the bot will experience during its ascent into orbit. Engineers have spent several months devising the best way to secure the humanoid, nicknamed R2, so it arrives at the ISS unharmed. The engineers concocted a plan to attach the robot to a base plate with its back and shoulders supported.

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.