Valkyrie (R5)

Model: valkyrie-r5

NASA's R5 Valkyrie is an entirely electric humanoid robot designed and built at the Johnson Space Center for the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge. Named after a figure from Norse mythology, it was built to operate in degraded or damaged human-engineered environments — with the long-term goal of supporting future space missions, either preparing sites before human arrival or assisting crews on other planets. Valkyrie has 44 degrees of freedom, including a 7-DOF arm on each side and simplified hands with 3 fingers and a thumb. The head sits on a 3-DOF neck with a Carnegie Robotics Multisense SL sensor (stereo, laser, IR structured light) plus fore and aft hazard cameras in the torso. After the DRC Trials, NASA provided units to MIT and Northeastern University with $500,000 each in funding for further research. NASA is also using Valkyrie as a dexterous robotics testbed under its Woodside Energy collaboration in Australia, maturing remote mobile manipulation for hazardous or remote facilities with operational demonstrations planned for 2026–2027 and lessons feeding Artemis/lunar-surface robotics work.