Emotion-sensing robot launches to assist space station astronauts
Emotion-sensing
robot launches to assist space station astronauts
FILE PHOTO: Bret Greenstein, IBM Global Vice President of Watson
Internet of Things Offerings, holds a clone of an artificial intelligence bot named
CIMON, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, U.S., June 28, 2018.
REUTERS/Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An
intelligent robot equipped with emotion-sensing voice detectors was headed to
the International Space Station after launching from Florida on Thursday,
becoming the latest artificial intelligence-powered astronaut workmate in orbit.
The Crew Interactive Mobile Companion 2,
or CIMON 2, is a spherical droid with microphones, cameras and a slew of
software to enable emotion recognition.
The droid was among 5,700 pounds
(2,585 kg) of supplies and experiments aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket,
whose midday launch had been delayed from Wednesday due to high winds.
“The overall goal is to really create a
true companion. The relationship between an astronaut and CIMON is really
important,” Matthias Biniok, the lead architect for CIMON 2, told Reuters.
“It’s trying to understand if the astronaut is sad, is he angry, joyful and so
on.”
Based on algorithms built by information
technology giant IBM Corp and data from CIMON 1, a nearly identical
prototype that launched in 2018, CIMON 2 will be more sociable with crew
members. It will test technologies that could prove crucial for future
crewed missions in deep space, where long-term isolation and communication lags
to Earth pose risks to astronauts’ mental health.
While designed to help astronauts
conduct scientific experiments, the English-speaking robot is also being
trained to help mitigate groupthink — a behavioral phenomenon in which isolated
groups of humans can be driven to make irrational decisions.
“Group-thinking is really
dangerous,” Biniok said. In times of conflict or disagreement among
astronauts, one of CIMON’s most important purposes would be to serve as “an
objective outsider that you can talk to if you’re alone, or could actually help
let the group collaborate again,” he said.
Engineers have said CIMON’s concept was
inspired by a 1940s science fiction comic series set in space, where a
sentient, brain-shaped robot named Professor Simon mentors an astronaut named
Captain Future. CIMON 2 also parallels HAL, the sentient computer in Stanley
Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” film.
SpaceX is the first private company to
fly to the space station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. Along with
CIMON 2, the cargo aboard its 19th resupply mission to the orbital research lab
included 40 live mice that will show scientists how muscles change in the
microgravity of space.
Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown
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