NASA has a vast corpus of procedures for activities on-board spacecraft, and the list will only grow as new, longer, and more complex missions are pursued. This work will be of immediate benefit when examining the potential roles humanoids, such as R2 and Valkyrie, might play on such a mission. R2 on ISS is an obvious testbed for examining how a humanoid robot might relieve the workload of crewmembers on a long mission.
Many companies and government agencies are developing humanoid robots for possible use in dangerous or difficult jobs. For many of these jobs, procedures exist that describe how the job is to be performed. Not surprisingly, most of these procedures were written with the expectation that humans would execute them. Thus, there is a huge corpus of procedures in all areas of human endeavor that will require products like the one being proposed here in order for humanoid robots to participate. We anticipate strong interest from humanoid manufacturers, which will only increase as the dexterity of their robots improves and they become practical for more tasks. NASA is not the only government entity that uses procedures and checklists to standardize human activity. As humanoid robots become practical in DoD or industrial settings, we expect this work to be applicable there as well. NASA's Robonaut-2 robot was developed as a partnership with General Motors to explore uses for humanoid robots in factories. That is a good indication that industry is taking seriously the development of this new class of robots. Our software will be applicable to many of their needs.
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