Airbus, a tech company working with the German space program DLR, has launched a revamped AI system to help astronauts battle loneliness while in space.
The tech company has revamed a new digital assistant for astronauts. While it originally premiered a year ago, being brought to the ISS by NASA, SpaceX will bring the digital assistant to the ISS aboard its Dragon Cargo Capsule. That particular shuttle launched on December 5th.
Originally, Cimon (the digital assistant’s name, short for Crew Interactive Mobile companiON) was programmed to “HELP WITH ROUTINE TASKS…[and] OFFER SOLUTIONS TO ONBOARD PROBLEMS SHOULD THEY OCCUR.”
Since then, the bot, backed with IBM’s Watson system, has been updated with the Watson Tone Analyzer. This allows the bot to assess and predict the astronauts’ emotions while communicating.
Representatives from IBM note,
With this update, CIMON has transformed from a scientific assistant to an empathetic conversational partner…Specifically, CIMON 2 has more sensitive microphones and an advanced sense of orientation. These AI capabilities and the stability of the complex software applications have also been significantly improved in the new CIMON 2.
With its simplistic, animated face, and weighing only 11 pounds, the bot can float freely within the ISS, or whatever shuttle or station it may be aboard. It also has small wind jets and a vacuum built into it, giving it the capabilities to move around in a zero-G environment.
Christian Karrasch, the project leader at DLR, identified Cimon as an essential tool for future space, or flight, travel. Essentially equating it to a smart phone, or a personal Google assistant.
If you go out to the moon or to Mars, you cannot take all mankind and engineers with you…So, the astronauts, they will be on their own. But with an artificial intelligence, you have instantly all the knowledge of mankind.
Cimon-2, as reported by CNN Business, will hold all the same capabilities of the original Cimon. This one will treat the aforementioned isolation issues astronauts face, as well as having a better sense of orientation and…better battery life.
Also, it apparently has some defense mechanisms built in. In the CNN video, it can be seen requesting of one of the astronauts “Don’t you like it here with me? Please be nice.”
One can only wonder how long until it starts to respond, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
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