In preparation for deep space travel, NASA is developing humanoid robots for astronaut assistance and has offered two prestigious U.S. schools the chance to tinker with them.

NASA announced in a news release Tuesday that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northeastern University would be awarded humanoid robot prototypes for research and development upgrades.

"Advances in robotics, including human-robotic collaboration, are critical to developing the capabilities required for our journey to Mars," Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the release. "We are excited to engage these university research groups to help NASA with this next big step in robotics technology development."

NASA stated MIT was selected for the robot's "Robust Autonomy for Extreme Space Environments" and Northeastern was assigned "Accessible Testing on Humanoid-Robot-R5 and Evaluation of NASA Administered (ATHENA) Space Robotics Challenge."

Leading the MIT team will be Russ Tedrake, the principal investigator for the school's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

"Tedrake's team, which was selected from groups that were entered in this year's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, will receive as much as $250,000 a year for two years from NASA's Space Technology Mission Directive," MIT stated in a news release. "NASA says it is interested in humanoid robots because they can help or even replace astronauts working in extreme space environments. Robots like R5 could be used in future missions either as precursor robots performing mission tasks before humans arrive or as human-assistive robots collaborating with the human crew. While R5 was initially designed to complete disaster-relief maneuvers, its main goal is now to prove itself worthy of even trickier terrain: deep-space exploration."