Japan aims for walking robot on the MOON by 2020

Well this is hopeful news, some would say "It's about time someone went back"

ktar.com

TOKYO (AP) - Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Specifics of the plan, including what new technologies will be required and the size of the project's budget, are to be decided within the next two years, according to Japan's Strategic Headquarters for Space Development, a Cabinet-level working group.

Development of a lunar robot is part of a broad framework outlined by the group, which is charged with plotting a new course for Japan's space strategy. As a next step, joint exploration of the moon involving robots and astronauts will be considered.

Details of the plan are expected over the next 2 years with the hopes of accomplishing this mission by 2020, hopefully this will come to fruition.

What happens when the robot trips on an alien artifact and can't get up

Consider this post as well:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

We could just set some autonomous robots into space, and stream back their findings!!

Sweet.

While it is interesting robot portion, I am more intrigued with the astronaut aspect of this mission.

Maybe they will take some requests, say...

Can you get us some pics of the US landing site while you are there?

I hope they get this mission approved

This (newer) article calls for a Japanese 'walking robot on the Moon' by 2015. Five years earlier than that of the OP.

"Charming robot to visit the moon"
www.cnet.com.au...

I hope they do it. I hope NASA gets Robonaut-2 on the Moon too. I hope they get a hundred humanoid robots on the Moon, and have the robots to build a Moon station for human occupation. Then do the same again for Mars. Humanoid robots first... then humans follow.

This is wicked cool and should be very interesting to watch in 2020. Hopefully these robots don't rebel against us and start singing all along the watch tower lol.

reply to post by MIB2012


If they rebel, then some programmer should be FIRED!

I wonder if the Japanese robot and the NASA robot will be able to communicate with each other in binary language?