The world’s first AI-powered astronaut assistant returned to the International Space Station a more empathetic companion.
Following a successful 14-month cosmic mission (and a short trip home to Earth), CIMON-2 arrived back on the artificial satellite with a heightened ability to analyze human emotion.
A joint project by IBM, Airbus, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), CIMON-2 caught a SpaceX rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 4.
Boasting a combination of IBM Watson AI, cloud connectivity, and neural network training, the Crew Interactive Mobile Companion can help complete routine tasks and research projects.
About the size of a medicine ball, the voice-controlled floating robot operates with a smile on its digital face, displaying instructions and recording images during an experiment.
It can also recognize, learn from, and bone with crew members through natural language; offer creative solutions to tricky challenges; and even serve as a security guard, noticing potential problems before they become dangerous.
During its initial operation—a 90-minute mission with German ESA cosmonaut Alexander Gerst in November 2018—the robot proved it functions well in microgravity and can successfully interact with scientists.
The improved CIMON-2 comes with more sensitive microphones, more robust computers, and IBM Watson Tone Analyzer technology, which uses linguistic analysis to detect emotion in the tone of a conversation.
“It is planned that CIMON-2 will stay on the ISS for up to three years and support the crew,” Airbus project manager Till Eisenberg said in a statement.
Ethical questions concerning the future use of CIMON, meanwhile, are under scrutiny by physicians at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich.
Because human images and audio are recorded, processed, and interpreted by the machine, high standards of data security—as well as trust—are necessary.
“The astronaut has control over CIMON at all times,” LMU researcher Judith Buchheim said in September, “which was especially important for us.”
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