The CIMON-2 is the astronaut's latest cyber companion in space!
The Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered contraption, fully known as Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, is a small floating sphere with a digital cartoon-like face. The robot accompanied two European astronauts to past missions to the International Space Station, where it is currently stored. The mechanical sphere will be woken up for the upcoming mission of German astronaut Matthias Maurer.
The CIMON-2 was developed by Till Eisenberg with the German Aerospace Centre DLR and the LMU University in Munich. Its function is to communicate with the astronauts, and respond to their commands. As for how it recognises speech, Space.com explains that the robot relies on IBM's Watson speech recognition and synthesis software to do so, as Till Einseber fully explains:
"The sphere is just the front end," Eisenberg said. "All the voice recognition and artificial intelligence happens on Earth at an IBM data centre in Frankfurt, Germany. The signal from CIMON has to travel through satellites and ground stations to the data centre and back. We focused on improving the robustness of this connection to prevent disruptions."
The current robot at the space station has the Watson Tone Analyzer, which makes it more attuned to the astronauts’ emotional states.
Image credit: Airbus
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