The newest crew member of the International Space Station blasted off from Japan aboard the Kounotori 4 Transfer Vehicle; this new crew member, who only stands just over a foot tall, was created as part of the "Kibo Robot Project" at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology.




PCMag reveals that Kirobo, whose name was created by mashing together the Japanese word for hope, "kibo," with the word "robot," will be able to use voice-recognition technology, natural-language processing, and facial recognition to speak with both astronauts in space and researchers back on Earth. Not only will Kirobo record the conversations it has with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata (once the latter arrives at the space station toward the end of this year), but it'll also help shuttle messages from the flight control room to the astronaut.

Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds for a robot to become an astronaut. Researchers had to subject Kirobo to a number of different tests to determine whether the robot would be suitable for its weightless mission, including thermal analysis testing, electromagnetic compatibility testing, and a test to determine whether the general background noise on board the Internal Space Station might otherwise interfere with the robot's voice-recognition capabilities.

"We are trying to help create a society where humans and robots coexist," said Fuminori Kataoka, the project's general manager, in a recent video.



"It was designed so that the person feels the robot being sympathetic or kind."

Kataoka wants to find out whether the robot can offer emotional support to astronauts; he hopes Kirobo can serve as a mediator between people and machines.

Mashable hits on the fact that this A.I. may bring to mind a corrupted super-machine like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Gerty from Moon. But those behind Kirobo — Toyota, ad firm Dentsu and the University of Tokyo — say the goal isn't a space-age Cyberdyne Systems.