"We found out that he was going to the space station so it required an overhaul of his electronics," said Verdeyen. "We had to turn around and make it space ready. It was unprecedented."

One of the biggest challenges for NASA engineers was to retrofit all of the robot's electronics to withstand radiation in space.

They also worked to make Robonaut 2 as "smart" as possible.

The robot has a total of 38 Power PC processors, including 36 embedded ones. The embedded chips are running in the machine's joints -- its hands, shoulders, waist, elbows, neck and five large joints in each arm.

Each of the embedded processors control senses and movement in each joint. However, the embedded processors don't communicate with each other; each one communicates with the robot's main computer chip.