What could this robot be thinking now?

“Does he like me? Why hasn’t he called back? How long should I wait before I call him? Would that make me look desperate? OMG, could I have gotten pregnant that way?”

Who cares what the robot is thinking. What the fuck are the humans thinking? So programming a “firm” handshake is impressive to the astronaut. There has to be more to it than that! I mean, if this is an impressive programming and engineering feat, then what is it really useful for? Why are they wasting this programming on something so effete as a handshake?

Damn it! We’re spending billions of dollar on the space station and all we get is an artificial handshake? What’s next? Will the robot pee in a coffee cup? Oh wait. That would require artificial gravity—something that might actually be useful!

Oh yeah! This is such a PR coup!

NOT

My guess is it is thinking:

01010100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01101001 01100111 01101000 01100010 01101111 01110010 01101000 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100001

(which translates to “There goes the neighborhood!”)

@wundayatta I’m impressed that the robot didn’t crush his hand. Being able to squeeze as tightly as necessary, but no more sounds pretty useful. Replacing human astronauts with robots sounds, to me, like it would save money.

I don’t understand your statement “we’re spending billions of dollar on the space station and all we get is an artificial handshake.” I seems like we’ve spent billions on a space station and we have a space station. The handshake seems like a minor detail, not the purpose of the space station.

@phaedryx My point is that this is public relations, and the focus of the public relations coup makes it seem like the only thing they do in space is shake hands with robots. What was the last thing you heard about the space station other than people flying up and down?

This is a public relations mistake, it seems to me. It trivializes the work, and does not explain the importance of what they do show. If you want to make a robot shake hands, you don’t need to go to space to do it, do you? There may be an important story here, but they are not telling it.

‘Stage One accomplished. Have gained human’s trust. Puny humans.’ is what it must be thinking…..

@thorninmud Handshake robot, not teenager from yahoo answers.

@wundayatta I’m sure there are many terribly important things being done concurrently – this just happens to be the only thing that the media understands and can describe in a story they think their audience wants to hear/see/read. They assume the actual science is above our heads (as it is above theirs).

“I just finished fisting C3PO & proceed to shake the hand of an astronaut, I really should’ve washed my hands first.”

“No wed-ding – ring.”

“I wonder what they taste like?”