Athena travels in style!

Sometimes when we see these sci-fi Hollywood movies,  looking at some of the weird gadgets and robots, it makes one wonder about its relationship with reality. But then something happens in real life and we are left wondering whether all that we see in sci-fi movies, can they be real?

Thus it was this feeling which engulfed one on reading this news that a humanoid robot, basically a robot designed to function like a human, had to travel on a flight by actually paying for the seat, like the way we all do. The robot, named Athena, with hands and feet and a head, was wearing good – looking red sneakers and boarded a flight in Los Angeles, going to Germany. Travelling economy class, it has earned the distinction of being the first robot traveling as a paid passenger on an airline.

Athena was pushed in a wheelchair and checked-in at the Lufthansa counter and collected ‘her’ boarding pass. “She’ was a celebrity as everyone around juts dropped everything they were doing, pulled out their cameras and mobiles and got into a picture clicking frenzy.

Athena was ‘born’ in Salt Lake City engineering and robotics company Sarcos and ‘she’ was purchased by Germany’s Max Planck Society, which along with researchers at the University of Southern California are trying to make her perform tasks too dangerous for humans, such as cleanup after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan.  That’s a pretty huge task lined up for her but for now, ‘she’ can only move her arms but sits around all the time.

Well, the good part for Athena was that ‘she’ was given special treatment despite travelling economy – she did not have to wait in any long queue for collecting the tickets and of course, no metal detector test! And yes, ‘she’ also had to be buckle up the seat belt in the flight. Why get her a plane ticket, when ‘she’ could have been dismantled and come in a box via cargo? Well, the flight ticket worked out cheaper! Now that’s perfect human nature which Athena cannot acquire.