 Alexander Herzog, a doctoral student at Max Planck Society, pushes 'Athena', the first 'humanoid' robot to fly as a passenger, as they arrive at Los Angeles International Airport, California December 15, 2014. Alexander Herzog (L) and Jeannette Bohg, doctoral student and senior research scientist at Max Planck Society respectively, push 'Athena', the first 'humanoid' robot to fly as a passenger, as they arrive at Los Angeles International Airport, California December 15, 2014. LOS ANGELES A humanoid robot with a head, hands and feet and wearing stylish red sneakers boarded a flight for Germany at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday, becoming what was billed as the first robot traveling as a paid passenger on an airline. The software to make her legs move and stand is still in the works, though her arms can operate and her mouth glows blue on a white head fitted with cameras and sensors. As for the flight, Athena was strapped into a seat like a regular passenger, but was put in the off position, accompanied all the way to her new laboratory home in Germany by Herzog and Jeannette Bohg, senior research scientist at the Max Planck Society.
– No danger of this passenger experiencing an episode of nut rage: In what Los Angeles International Airport says is an aviation first, a robot traveled as a paying passenger on Monday, sitting in an economy-class seat of its own on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, Reuters reports. "Athena," a US-made humanoid robot, was pushed through the airport in a wheelchair by two German researchers who plan to teach it to walk—and, eventually, to perform dangerous tasks like the nuclear cleanup at Fukushima. For now, she can't do much more than move her arms. An airport spokeswoman says the red-sneaker-clad Athena could have made the overseas voyage in a box, but the scientists "wanted to see how humans responded to a robot sitting in a plane." It is fairly common for people with precious cargo to buy a plane seat for it, but "most of that equipment doesn't have a humanoid face," Mashable notes. It doesn't always get special perks, either: Athena didn't have to submit to the metal detector (she got a special pat-down) and got to cut to the front of the boarding line—the first-class one at that.