RoboNaut

The robonaut is the first humanoid robot to come into use in space.

The practicality of this device is obviously quite limited. It is intended as a research platform into humanoid robot presence in later missions.
NASA hopes that by watching the interactions and problems that a robot in a space craft presents, it can improve them to a point where deep-space missions can be unmanned.
To me, this seems like a move primarily concerned with publicity. No image more aggressively communicates futurism than that of a humanoid robot. The fact that this proof-of-concept device is actually onboard the International Space Station is somewhat surprising to me. It is a device that is not designed to be useful for any purpose outside of the propagation of future robots in space. It is the greatest self-advocate in the cosmos.
The severed torso of a robot has few of the capabilities of it’s humanoid brethren. Unlike other space robotics, this instance has no capability for which a human not better suited. It cannot leave the ISS, as it is not space-proof.

Things I found interesting in the reading:
‘ Better to have a full functioning golem than to live in ignorance’ – paraphrase of Pickering — How can we know?
I love entropy. Things get more and more useless over time. The more frequent something is, the less the value. I had never heard this applied to language, and found the thought striking.The analogy of humans and robots both functioning using abstracted PID is something I think about a lot. Whenever I am on a unicycle or balancing on a chair, I think of myself as a robot in a PID loop. I was glad to learn this was not an original phenomenon.
During the Hofstadter reading I was pushed onto a brief wikipedia binge where I discovered the Quine.
I had never heard of the phenomenon of people falling in love with ELIZA. That is psychologically intriguing.