CIMON, the world's first AI-powered astronaut assistant, is returning to the International Space Station, with greater ability to detect and react to human emotion.
The goal, according to the researchers who tweaked the robot after its first successful mission aboard a spacecraft, is to transform CIMON from a scientific assistant to an "empathetic companion."
The original CIMON, which spent 14 months in space, and the new and improved CIMON-2 are a joint project of IBM, Airbus and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). CIMON returned to Earth from the International Space Station in August 2019, and now it returns to the space station on a SpaceX rocket at the December 4 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
CIMON, which stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, was created to assist astronauts in their various research tasks and activities. The voice-controlled floating robot, whose face is plastered with a faint smile on a screen, can display instructions and record images during an experiment, while listening and talking to the astronaut.
improvement
When CIMON was first used on the International Space Station, "it proved that it was able to understand not only the content in a given context, but also the intent behind it," said Matthias Biniok, IBM Watson principal architect for the Germany. CIMON-2 goes further and can assess emotions and respond appropriately according to the astronauts' preference.
Like its predecessor, CIMON-2 uses cameras, microphones and a speaker to see, hear and speak. CIMON-2 also incorporates other AI technologies in IBM Cloud, such as IBM Watson Tone Analyzer, which allows it to assess astronauts' emotions and react accordingly; the IBM Watson Assistant, which gives the air assistant its conversational capabilities; and Watson Speech to Text services for speech recognition and text transcription.
CIMON-2 is also a better listener. New microphones make the device more sensitive to comments and voice commands, so it can be interrupted while speaking.
“With CIMON-2, we want to continue the success that the CIMON demonstration has been,” said Christian Karrasch, DLR's CIMON project manager.
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