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Do astronauts need to be afraid of the new AI robot headed to the International Space Station?

Do astronauts need to be afraid of the new AI robot headed to the International Space Station?
Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

  • Updated:

Space agencies around the world are expecting applications to be an astronaut to take a hit as the 2018 version of HAL 9000 is sent to the ISS. What makes it all the more worrying is that the floating AI that comes complete with a face and a voice has a creepy tech name. The robot is called CIMON, which stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion.

New robot sent to ISS
“Hello I’m CIMON” – Image via: Airbus

In reality, CIMON is the first of its kind. How it performs will give a good indication of whether AI assistants can help out in space and determine whether further robots will be developed for future long-term space missions. CIMON is the work of the AI guys at IBM and flight mechanism developers at Airbus. Once on the ISS, CIMON will be tasked with being a hands-free assistant to make tasks easier. As well as showing its face, the center screen will be able to display instructions to tasks, that’ll go with voice commands and station procedures regarding live experiments.

HAL 9000, of course, was the fictional AI computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” who turned on his crew and nearly wiped them all out. Hopefully, HAL’s real-world cousin is a much more benign presence in space, but as always, we’ll have to wait and see. CIMON will head up to the ISS on the next SpaceX resupply mission.

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Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney is a news reporter for Softonic, keeping readers up to date on everything affecting their favorite apps and programs. His beat includes social media apps and sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. Patrick also covers antivirus and security issues, web browsers, the full Google suite of apps and programs, and operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Android.

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