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An AI-powered robot with a digital face is ready for a new mission on the International space station.
The robot, called CIMON-2 (short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) has worked alongside two European astronauts on past missions at the station in recent years and has just received a software upgrade that will allow him to perform more complex tasks with a new human teammate later this year.
The cute floating sphere with a cartoon-like face has been stored at the space station since the astronaut left the European Space Agency (ESA) Luca Parmitano in February 2020. The robot will wake up again during the next mission of German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will arrive at the orbital outpost with the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon mission in October.
For a year and a half since the end of the last mission, engineers have been working on improving the connection from CIMON to Earth so that it can provide a more transparent service to astronauts, Till Eisenberg, CIMON project manager at Airbus, who developed the intelligent robot with the German Aerospace Center DLR and LMU University Munich, told Space.com.
Related: A floating ‘brain’ will help astronauts aboard the space station
“The sphere is just the front end,” Eisenberg said. “All of the speech recognition and artificial intelligence is happening on Earth at an IBM data center in Frankfurt, Germany. The signal from CIMON must pass through satellites and ground stations to the data center and back. We have focused on improving the robustness of this connection to avoid disruption. “
A robot friend in space
CIMON relies on IBM Watson recognition and speech synthesis software for interacting with astronauts and responding to their commands. The first generation robot flew to the space station with Alexandre barley in 2018. This robot then returned to Earth and is now touring German museums. The current robot, CIMON-2, is a second generation. Unlike its predecessor, it is more attentive to the emotional states of astronauts (thanks to the Watson Tone Analyzer). It also has a shorter reaction time.
“During the early stages of the development process, we had a delay of about ten seconds, which was not very practical,” said Eisenberg. “Thanks to the improved software architecture, we were able to get down to two seconds, just in time for the first mission. With other software upgrades, we have now tried to eliminate delays that can occur when the connection is dropped.
Airbus and the DLR signed a contract with ESA for CIMON-2 to work with four humans on the orbital outpost in the coming years. During these four consecutive missions, the engineers will first test the new CIMON software, then allow the sphere to participate in more complex experiments.
During these new missions, CIMON will guide and document full scientific procedures for the first time, Airbus said. in a report.
“Most of the activities that astronauts perform are covered by step-by-step procedures,” Eisenberg said. “Normally they have to use clipboards to follow these steps. But CIMON can free their hands by floating nearby, listening to commands and reading procedures, displaying videos, pictures and clarifications on its screen. . “
The robot can also search for additional information and document experiences by taking videos and photos. Scientists will be collecting feedback from astronauts to see how useful the sphere has been and to identify improvements for future CIMON incarnations.
Building a smarter space robot
So far, CIMON has only been trained to navigate the space station’s European Columbus module, Eisenberg said. The 11-pound (5 kg) sphere floats using its small air jets. A set of ultrasonic sensors along with a stereo camera help the robot navigate space and avoid walls and equipment. CIMON is also equipped with a high resolution camera that allows it to recognize the faces of individual astronauts. Two smaller cameras on the sides of the sphere are used for taking photos and videos. A total of nine microphones help CIMON identify the source of sound and detect and record speech.
In the future, the team hopes to make CIMON independent of the data center on the ground. Astronauts on a future mission to the moon and March will surely appreciate a robotic assistant. However, for such missions, it would be impossible to wait for speech processing to take place on Earth.
“There is already enough computing power on board the space station that could support CIMON,” Eisenberg said. “It’s just a matter of sharing these computational resources. But we want to start working in parallel on CIMON-3, which would be able to use services directly on board without the need for a ground connection.”
Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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