Space Droids Using Sign Language?, earlier post on 15 November 2011
“Background: I worked for more than a decade as a professional certified (educational) sign language interpreter. This idea occurred to me when I was looking at this picture and instantly wondered what Robonaut-2 “wanted” or why it was seemingly in the process of saying “here” or maybe “give”. Imagine how fast a video of Robonaut-2 saying something in American Sign Language from space would go viral. NASA could have a competition wherein people submit questions for it to answer. NASA already has a signing astronaut and SMD and NLSI already put out books in Braille. Just a thought.”
Keith’s note: @AstroRobonaut just tweeted: “Did you catch that? I don’t have a voice, but I sent you a message — Hello world … in sign language!”
I don’t know, with the out stretched hands it looks like “hey buddy, can you spare a dime?”
Well, actually, my first impression, being fluent in ASL, was that he was saying “want” so you are pretty close to what I understood it to be!
So the friggin’ robot is more responsive to Keith’s questions than NASA PAO?
The Pentagon already has one:
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
And the robot speaks a language I am fluent in. How cool.
I, for one, would like to welcome our new robot overlords…
It is too bad that Dick Tufeld has recently passed. He would have been a great voice for Robonaut. For those too young to remember, Mr. Tufeld provided the voice of the Robot on the Lost in Space television series in the 1960’s and in the movie in 1998.