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AI ISS Robotics Software Technology

SpaceX Will Send an AI Robot To Join Astronauts On ISS (seattletimes.com) 64

Posted by BeauHD from the up-up-and-away dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Seattle Times: A robot with true artificial intelligence is about to invade space. The large, round, plastic robot head is part of SpaceX's latest supply delivery to the International Space Station. Friday's pre-dawn liftoff also includes two sets of genetically identical female mice, 20 mousestronauts that will pick up where NASA's identical twin brother astronauts left off a few years ago. Super-caffeinated coffee is also flying up for the space station's java-craving crew.

As intriguing as identical space siblings and turbo-charged space coffee may be, it's the German robot -- named Cimon, pronounced Simon, after a genius doctor in science fiction's "Captain Future" -- that's stealing the show. Like HAL, the autonomous Cimon is an acronym: it stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion. Its AI brain is courtesy of IBM. German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who arrived at the orbiting lab a month ago, will introduce Cimon to space life during three one-hour sessions. Already savvy about Gerst's science experiments, the self-propelling Cimon will float at the astronaut's side and help, when asked, with research procedures. To get Cimon's attention, Gerst will need only to call its name. Their common language will be English, the official language of the space station.
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SpaceX Will Send an AI Robot To Join Astronauts On ISS More

SpaceX Will Send an AI Robot To Join Astronauts On ISS

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  • Bring back alien life form.

    Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?

  • ...I'm afraid I can't do that.

  • "True artificial intelligence" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:47PM (#56862524) Journal
    So, it's fully self-aware, fully cognitive, has a human-like personality, can pass the Turing Test, and so on? What's that you say? No? None of the above? Stop trying to pass this shit off as actual 'AI', damnit.
    • It's not from SpaceX either. They're just giving it a ride.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ya.. but still, they are one step closer to robots replacing astronauts' jobs.

      no job is safe from automation... on OR off this planet.

    • According to your definition, neither a child or chimp is intelligent because they can't pass the Turing Test.

      • No.

        It has been apparent for decades that the Turing Test is not an adequate measure of "true AI".

        People are too easy to fool.

        Programs that pass limited versions of the Turing Test have been around for a very long time.

        ELIZA [wikipedia.org] fooled people clear back in 1966. But by all measures it was a rather elementary program.

        Not only does "True AI" not yet exist, we really have no idea how to accomplish it.

        • Programs that pass limited versions of the Turing Test have been around for a very long time.

          That's why Alan Turing, didn't specify a "limited" version in his paper. No program today comes even close to passing a full test like Turing proposed, with high quality judges asking good questions.

          Anyway, none of this really matters for what OP said and my response to that.

      • Not my fault your kid isn't even as smart as a chimp. xD xD xD

  • Two things... (Score:3)

    by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Thursday June 28, 2018 @06:50PM (#56862540)

    Imprimis - it would be nice if you refrained from linking to sites that insist they be allowed to serve ads to me in order to see their article. Because I won't turn off my adblock unless it's to see an article about the End of the World which isn't being shown anywhere else.

    Secundus - The headline suggests that SpaceX has something to do with the robot other than transporting it for the customer/maker. TFS seems to be saying that the robot was developed and built elsewhere.
    I know that anything to do with Elon Musk is automatically newsworthy and all that (and a good excuse among many for a hate-fest), but taking a box built by (and programmed by) someone else to the ISS isn't really worth bringing the transporter into it.
    Unless, if the AI had been transported by the Russians, the title would have been "Russians take AI robot to ISS", mentioning SpaceX was extraneous to the subject....

  • I hope someone was smart enough to build a functioning Off Switch. Because, what could possibly go wrong?

  • ... don't let it drive.

    Just saying.

    • Except that Musk (or any of his companies) had nothing to do with designing this AI...or the robot at all.

  • Robonaut 1 is going to be hella jealous of this robohead jerk. Don't be surprised if the SpaceX bot is "accidentally" blown out the airlock. ;)

  • Why headline with SpaceX? (Score:3)

    by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Thursday June 28, 2018 @07:21PM (#56862672) Journal

    While I like SpaceX, of the terms "robot", "AI", "ISS", "German", "IBM", "Cimon" and "SpaceX", "SpaceX" is the least important to this story.

  • It looks like Cimon's OS is ubuntu! Check out this video around 1m 35s => https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Like HAL, the autonomous Cimon is an acronym: it stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion. Its AI brain is courtesy of IBM.

    1. Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto [youtube.com]
    2. Okay, unless there's some weird German thing, I'm not getting that acronym. Cimon in an acronym standing for Crew Interactive Mobile ... Companion?
    3. Way to bury the lede, Slashdot. SpaceX has nothing to do with the robot, short of delivering it.
  • IBM is really desperately trying to push their "AI" with marketing gimmicks like this. They should start producing something useful.

  • I have it on good authority that only a truly-insipid twat would say "AI robot."

  • The headline of this article is odd. Why does it matter how the robot is getting to the ISS? It's the robot that is the interesting part of the story.

  • Kinda Nifty Technology (Score:5, Informative)

    by AnotherAnonymousUser ( 972204 ) on Thursday June 28, 2018 @08:25PM (#56862952)
    I'm on site for this launch, and got to meet and interview some of the people working on it. It's essentially a front-end device for Watson, helping it to navigate around the space station and try to be useful for the scientists on board. Right this second, it seems more of a novelty, but the impellers driving it mean that it should be able to self navigate, and collect some good data from the interactions. They said the latency for connecting to the Watson infrastructure on the ground is around two seconds. This is also the first test of this technology in space, so they have a long way to go, and a lot of basic things to work out, but it's something that the platform can only grow stronger from, if they proceed with future testing, so as to be more useful for the astronauts. It struck me as a floating iPad with voice activation and natural speech recognition, but might prove to be more as time goes on and they start assigning value to it.
    • Pretty awesome! It must be really hard to navigate around the space station! Glad they have AI assistance for that so they won't get lost.

    • LOLWOT? It's a PR Stunt you dimwit! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > but might prove to be more as time goes on and they start assigning value to it.

      And they could only learn that by putting it on a space station. Are you for real. Well, no you are not. You are hired by IBM. Not an engineer because you wouldn't have written such nonsense. More like a technically-illiterate communications major trying to spin on social media while making up for your obvious lack of basic technical knowledge. So how is that working out for you, dimwit?

      IBM WATSON has been an overhyped fail

  • Put that German quality robot to work making more German robots on earth.
    Gather the new German designed robots and put them to work making cars.

  • So I guess portal cores are an actual thing now

  • I, for one, welcome our orbiting omni-knowledgable visigoth overlords.

  • I for one welcome our robotic overlords but stop the hype.. . I have no doubt it's a really cool robot with pretty neat software and it probably can do a lot of really funky stuff but it is really annoying how lately anything with a little machine learning, a few clever tricks is presented as full AI as if it was self aware etc

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • How long until they are playing "Simon Says"?

  • Using SpaceX in the title here is total trolling. SpaceX is just the delivery plan. Its like writing "Rape not a part of Slashdot editors daily schedule" as the title for an article on what Slashdot editors do.

  • Why would they make it look like GLaDOS from Portal?

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