Robot with AI to join space station crew
German-built machine to help with experiments
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A robot with true artificial intelligence is about to invade space.
The large, round, plastic robot head is part of Spacex’s latest supply delivery to the International Space Station.
Friday’s pre-dawn liftoff also includes two sets of genetically identical female mice that will pick up where NASA’S identical twin brother astronauts left off a few years ago. Super-caffeinated coffee is also flying up for the crew.
The German robot is named Cimon, pronounced Simon, after a genius doctor in science fiction’s “Captain Future.”
Cimon’s human handlers promise there will be no mutinous takeovers like HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“He’s a friendly guy, and he has this hard power-off button,” German Space Agency physicist Christian Karrasch, the project manager, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Like HAL, the autonomous Cimon is an acronym: it stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion. Its AI brain is courtesy of IBM.
German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who arrived at the orbiting lab a month ago, will introduce Cimon to space life during three one-hour sessions. Already savvy about Gerst’s science experiments, the self-propelling Cimon will float at the astronaut’s side and help, when asked, with research procedures.
Cimon smiles when it senses the conversation is upbeat and frowns when it’s sad. A small screen on the sphere serves as its face.
During its open-ended stay on the space station, Cimon should grow ever smarter, its system updated via IBM’S Cloud.