A Floating Brain

CIMON, short for "Crew Interactive Mobile Companion." Built by the aerospace design company Airbus in collaboration with IBM, CIMON houses artificial intelligence (AI) in an autonomous, spherical body that would "float" in the space station's microgravity environment, with a screen that can display data readouts for astronauts — or present an image of a friendly face — as well as a voice shaped by IBM's AI technology. Airbus and IBM developed Cimon, which speaks English, for the German national space agency, DLR.

CIMON weighs about 11 lbs. (5 kilograms) and is already "training" with an astronaut — Alexander Gerst, who represented the European Space Agency (ESA) on the ISS from May to November 2014. Gerst will return to the ISS, bringing CIMON along, from June to October 2018, on ESA's Horizons mission. It is an attempt to find out whether robots and astronauts can collaborate.

CIMON is designed to support astronauts in performing routine work, for example by displaying procedures or – thanks to its ‘neural’ AI network and its ability to learn – offering solutions to problems. It uses Watson AI technology from the IBM cloud and, with its face, voice and artificial intelligence, becomes a genuine ‘colleague’ on board. With CIMON, crew members can do more than just work through a schematic view of prescribed checklists and procedures; they can also engage with their assistant. In this way, CIMON makes work easier for the astronauts when carrying out every day routine tasks, helps to increase efficiency, facilitates mission success and improves security, as it can also serve as an early warning system for technical problems.

Since 2016, a team of 50 technicians has been working to prepare the AI for its trip into space, feeding it data about the ISS and ensuring that the robot can orient itself and move freely. At the same time that CIMON was learning about the layout of the ISS, it was also becoming familiar with its astronaut colleague Gerst, through photos and voice samples.

Once CIMON is in space, astronauts and the AI will work together on a series of tasks that includes working with crystals, solving a Rubik's Cube and performing a medical experiment in which CIMON will serve as an interactive camera, Airbus representatives said in the statement.

CIMON tested first ‘taste of space’ as early as March 2018: the 31st DLR parabolic flight campaign will focus in particular on testing and optimizing GNC algorithms (Guidance, Navigation and Control) under zero G conditions.

taken from external source..