MIT designed these tiny R2-D2 robots to help keep spaceships safe

AstroAnts are swarms of robots designed to roam spaceships, planetary bases, orbital space stations, and other hard-to-monitor machinery.

The idea of having robots aiding humans in spaceships, orbital stations, and bases in remote planets is as old as sci-fi itself, but it’s taken decades for someone to come up with an idea for an “astromech” (think R2-D2 from Star Wars) that actually makes sense and doesn’t feel like a gimmick.