"Flying Brain" droid out of science fiction launched in space

CIMON is the R2-D2 droid predecessor of "Star Wars" or HAL 9000 of "2001: Space Odyssey". CIMON is an AI, nicknamed "the flying brain" which has just been launched in space aboard the cargo ship "Dragon" from Space X. He will help the German astronaut Alexander Gerst to perform a number of scientific tasks aboard the International Space Station.

CIMON, which stands for "Crew Interactive Mobile Companion", is the first robot. Designed by Airbus and IBM, it weighs 11 pounds and is about the size of a basketball. However, it packs the strength of the IBM Watson supercomputer neural network into its reports "Brain", Techcrunch.

Speaking as a cartoon face on the monitor, CIMON was trained to recognize the voice and face of astronaut Gerst, who is also a geophysicist with the European Space Agency .Gerst will be in able to call CIMON, prompting the droid to He uses more than a dozen propellers to track the voice and float there.The CIMON camera will hover at eye level, detecting the Wanted person.The programming of the bot can even interpret the emotional states and will react Its emotional intelligence is supposed to help monitor the psychological states of the crew.

CIMON will help solve a Rubik's cube. Credit: Airbus

Bret Greenstein World Vice President of Watson Internet of Things Offerings at IBM, explained that CIMON will be able to listen to the astronaut.

"It is designed to work in English" says Greenstein "He understands Alexander, he will come to him when he speaks."

CIMON may also interact with other crew members who can give him voice commands, but it will work better with Gerst. The goal is for CIMON to become a real crew member on the station.

During the mission, CIMON should guide Gerst through a crystal growing experiment and help him look at a Rubik's cube through his camera while giving him instructions. to solve it.

The droid can also detect dangerous situations or technical problems to warn astronauts. Another of his tasks is to assist Gerst during a complex medical experiment

In a IBM blog Matthias Biniok, l 39 Watson architect in Germany, explained why CIMON can do is useful:

"Experiments sometimes consist of more than 100 different steps," he said. "CIMON knows them all."

From a technological point of view, CIMON has an infrared camera at the front, a microphone at the back, two batteries and a two – pin battery. an "offline" button.

And if you never have enough, here is how CIMON works –