International Space Station welcomes AI robot
CIMON could save astronauts a lot of time during experiments and help them perform more efficiently
The Space Station robot CIMON has exchanged its first words with its spacefaring crew. German astronaut Alexander Gerst spoke with the artificially intelligent crew assistant during a 90-minute experiment on 15 November aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
According to a statement from the manufacturer, Airbus, Gerst, the commander of the current space station crew, woke up CIMON (the Crew Interactive Mobile CompanioN) with the words “Wake up, CIMON.” In response CIMON said, “What can I do for you?” During the experiment CIMON successfully found and recognised Gerst's face, took photos and video, positioned itself autonomously within the Columbus module using its ultrasonic sensors and issued instructions for Gerst to perform a student-designed experiment with crystals.
Weighing about five kilograms (11 pounds) on Earth, the 3D-printed robot, designed jointly by the German space agency DLR, Airbus and IBM, works similarly to Apple’s virtual assistant Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. CIMON doesn't process commands itself, but instead communicates with a ground-based cloud computer – IBM's natural language-processing computer, Watson.
“If CIMON is asked a question or addressed, the Watson AI firstly converts this audio signal into text, which is understood, or interpreted, by the AI,” explains IBM project lead Matthias Biniok in the statement. “IBM Watson not only understands content in context, it can also understand the intention behind it.”
The computer provides a tailored answer to an astronaut’s query, and this answer is then converted into speech and beamed back to the ISS. CIMON is connected to the ISS Wi-Fi network that transmits data via satellite connections to the ground.