CIMON says: "I'm ready to be an astronaut!"

   Managing Director of Microgravity Payloads at Airbus, Manfred Jaumann says:

"In a nutshell, CIMON will be the first IA-based flight and mission assistance system," ... "We are the first European company that will carry the ISS a 'free flyer', a kind of flying brain, and that will develop artificial intelligence for the crew on board the space station."

    According  to Jaumann, pioneering work is also being done in the manufacture of the complete structure of CIMON, made of plastic and metal, and which has been created using 3D printing. 

_{Source /  three astronauts with CIMON before its first test flight with zero gravity.} 

   It is not the first time that a robot travels into space. NASA already took its Robonaut 2, or R2, to the Destiny module of the space  station in 2011. But R2 is a non-autonomous android, teleoperated by  astronauts or from Earth.  It also could not move, although in 2014 the Americans sent a pair of robotic legs and a large software upgrade to the ISS. But since they implanted the lower extremities, R2 was not the same. It  began to have a strange behavior and to give an increasing number of  errors, which led the people in charge of the project to disconnect it. 

   But the fundamental difference between R2 and CIMON is that, at this time, artificial intelligence has advanced a lot. So much that it is urgent to clear up unknowns. The first mission of CIMON will serve to see how it is understood with its human companions. He is also prepared to identify the onset of stress in his human colleagues and act to mitigate it. 

   CIMON is  designed to help astronauts perform routine tasks, for example,  visualizing procedures or offering solutions to problems, and improving  safety, as it can also be used as an early warning system for technical  problems. The system works thanks to its neural network of AI and its ability to learn. It  uses Watson AI technology from the IBM cloud and, with its face, voice  and artificial intelligence, it becomes a true "colleague" on board. In fact, the crew members can also interact with their assistant. 

_{Source -  CIMON and a photo of Gerts for facial recognition tests.} 

   Initially, Airbus considered the concept of the assistance system as part of a self-funded study. Subsequently,  in August 2016, the DLR space agency based in Bonn (Germany)  commissioned the development of the project to Airbus aerospace experts. 

   Since then,  an energetic 50-person project team, including members of the DLR, IBM  and the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), has collaborated  to ensure that CIMON takes shape and comes alive. The  system is learning to orient itself and move, accumulates knowledge with  the help of Watson AI technology and is training to recognize its human  colleagues. 

   The Watson AI has been trained, among other things, using voice samples and photos  of Alexander Gerst and procedures and drawings of the ISS Columbus module have also been loaded into the database. Alexander  Gerst has also participated in the selection of the face of the screen  and the voice of CIMON's computer, so that he has also been able to "build friendship" with his electronic colleague. 

   For  the future, Airbus project manager Till Eisenberg says: 

"Our long-term  vision includes CIMON as a fully autonomous assistance system that will  be able to give advice and suggestions even in unexpected situations of  interest for manned space flights, but also for many applications on  Earth. " 

_Source

 What do you think could be other uses for this AI? And what is your opinion about this collaboration project between Airbus and IBM?

Thanks for reading, it's always a pleasure for me. @michaelizer 

_{Source:  Airbus - "Hello, I'm CIMON" & IBM}