Meet the Cute Little Robot That'll Soon Float Around with Astronauts

[Voiceover] Meet NASA's Astrobee robot.

Yeah all right, it doesn't really

look like a bee but it sure sounds

like one and come on, that counts.

And soon enough it'll fly like a bee too

because this little robot is training to hit

the ISS where it will float around

autonomously alongside astronauts.

On top of keeping an eye on the crew

Astrobee could do lots more.

From monitoring air quality, to dull chores

like cataloging tools freeing up time for the astronauts.

For now though, the cubic Astrobee rides

atop a very special platform.

Welcome to the granite lab.

This is where we do 2D testing of the Astrobee robots.

This is an enormous slab of polished granite

that we allow the robot to ride around

on in a more of less frictionless way.

The way that works is we have an air bearing

that the robot above is mounted on and

the air bearing is powered with the CO two

canisters that are similar to what

you'd use with a paintball gun.

The CO two flows out the bottom here and that

allows it to slide frictionlessly over the surface.

[Voiceover] So think of it like a

reverse air hockey table.

Instead of the table producing the air

it's actually the puck that's doing all the work.

The robot is only hovering on a table here,

not floating around in 3D space,

but it's allowing the Astrobee team

to test how their robot will move.

The first thing you'll see is that Astrobee's

basic structure is the central module

and two propulsion modules.

So each of these propulsion modules is based

around a centrifugal impeller so that draws

air in through the screen and it very

lightly pressurizes the interior of this box.

And then the air flows out of these six nozzles

that are located on different sides of the box.

So each nozzle is pointed in a fixed direction

but it has two flappers inside that can open

or close the air flow out of that nozzle.

[Voiceover] By tweaking the airflow through

each of the nozzles, the Astrobee will sail

around the ISS on it's own.

And check out the walls here, they're actually

photos of the real space station that Astrobee

can eyeball to get it's bearings.

Here on the front you'll see three cameras.

The first camera is the Nav-Cam.

That's what we use for general purpose navigation.

That's where we're recognizing a prior map

that we've built of the interior of the ISS

and it's telling us where we're located.

This is the Haz-Cam.

It returns a 3D point cloud and we can

use that to detect obstacles in front of us.

And then the third sensor is the Psi-Cam.

It's very small back here.

We can stream live HD video of crew

activities using that camera.

[Voiceover] It can even set up as a sentry

by holding onto poles with its little hand.

Once attached, the Astrobee can idle it's engines,

saving energy and cutting down on ambient noise.

And when it runs low on juice it will

automatically doc itself here to recharge.

Now that is one busy little bee.