The International Space Station has an IA assistant. No … it's not bad



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By Molly Wood, Stephanie Hughes and Shaheen Ainpour

July 05, 2018 | 05:22

  Matthias Biniok with CIMON.
Matthias Biniok with CIMON. –

There has been a long history in science fiction of robots accompanying humans in space. The ambitions of these robots have traveled the gamut, from those who try to embrace their humanity (like Data from "Star Trek") to others who are trying to kill us (like HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey "). But before we can know if real life robots are helping us or turning us around, we brought them there.

Enter CIMON, abbreviation of Crew Interactive Mobile Companion

He arrived at the International Space Station. at the back of a SpaceX rocket on Monday. It's about the size of a football with a very low resolution digital face. It is designed to float around the space station autonomously and help astronauts when they need it. CIMON is a joint project between IBM, Airbus and the German Aerospace Center.

"CIMON itself is a so-called" technology demonstrator "that will be used only on the International Space Station as a" crew wizard, "said Matthias Biniok. IBM, one of the designers of CIMON. "But the core technology behind is commercially available, and can be used on other projects."

CIMON also has a science fiction base. The robot is based on a comic television show called "Captain Future".

"There was a little flying brain called Professor Simon, and that's where it came from," says Biniok. "Imagine that you are an astronaut and that you have to do a complex task – for example, crystallization," said Biniok. "Right now, you have to go back to the laptop, but if you had a space companion, you could just ask for an answer?"

CIMON is like Siri or orbital Alexa, floating with space station manuals and But with all the automation problems that cause humans to quit their jobs, should astronauts worry? "An AI should always be an badistance system," says Biniok. "We are talking about augmented intelligence rather than artificial intelligence, we do not want to create a new stronaut up there."

CIMON has to stay indefinitely on the space station. Hoping that it is less HAL and more data.

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