Valkyrie

A high-tech humanoid stands in a power pose with hands on its hips. It's appearance resembles an astronaut, with its white jointed body, helmet with gold accents, and chest plate with the NASA logo.
NASA's most advanced space humanoid. Photo: NASA

Valkyrie is an advanced humanoid designed to operate in degraded or damaged human-engineered environments. NASA hopes to eventually send Valkyrie into space, to the moon, and to Mars.

Creator

NASA

Year
2013
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Categories
Features
NASA's superhero robot. Video: IEEE Spectrum

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Appearance

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Did you know?

Valkyrie's chest protects the robot if it falls forward, and houses linear actuators that can rotate the its torso.

A close-up of Valkyrie's white helmeted head which includes a horizontal forehead panel with sensors, and a mouth section also with visible sensors.
Face full of sensors. Photo: Evan Ackerman

History

Valkyrie was developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), which has a long history of humanoid robot development, most notably the Robonaut program. Team leader Nicolaus Radford supervised a group of engineers from NASA JSC, in Houston, Texas, who designed and built Valkyrie in total secrecy and under a tight deadline—nine months—in partnership with the University of Texas and Texas A&M. Valkyrie, officially designated "R5" by NASA, was created to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials. In 2016, NASA awarded Valkyrie robots to three robotics labs in the United States and Europe to explore and develop the humanoid's capabilities: MIT, University of Massachusetts Lowell (which teamed up with Northeastern University in Boston) and University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

The robot's hand is seen with fingers balled into a fist.
The robot is covered in fabric-wrapped foam. Photo: Evan Ackerman
A man adjusts a large black and gold backpack on Valkyrie, who is held up by a harness in a lab.
Battery backpack. Photo: Evan Ackerman

Specs

Electrically powered. Swappable battery. Series-elastic rotary actuators in arms and legs. Covered in soft fabric. Named after female figures in Norse mythology. Designed and built in 9 months.

Status

Ongoing

Year

2013

Website

nasa.gov/feature/r5

Height
190 cm
Weight
125 kg
Sensors

Carnegie Robotics Multisense SL in head, secondary head cameras, torso cameras, shin cameras, knee lidars, six-axis force-torque sensors in feet

Actuators

Five series-elastic rotary actuators and and two linear actuators in arms. Six finger and thumb actuators. Five series-elastic rotary actuators in upper leg and two in ankles. Five series elastic rotary actuators in torso.

Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
44 (Neck: 3 DoF; Arm: 4 DoF x 2; Wrist: 3 DoF x 2; Hand: 4 DoF x 2; Torso: 3 DoF, Leg: 6 DoF x 2; Ankle: 2 DoF x 2)
Materials

Covered in foam and soft fabric

Compute

Two Intel Core i7s

Software

Robot Operating System (ROS)

Power

1.8-kWh dual-voltage battery

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