Another scientific breakthrough is all set to mark the friendship between artificial intelligence tools and human beings. With the emergence of CIMON, the abbreviated form of Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, AI robots and humans will work hand-in-hand in space exploration activities.
CIMON is a small round robot sent on a two-day mission to International Space Station or ISS. It will act as a "talking" assistant to astronauts who have been working hard to unveil the hidden secrets buried in the space. The robotic companion has been launched and released from Florida on Friday and is scheduled to reach its destination by Monday. It is the first personal AI-driven companion to human scientists in space.
"CIMON is a free flyer fuelled with Artificial Intelligence, enhancing human expertise," European aerospace company Airbus stated while describing its creation. "AI-based technology is about constantly understanding, reasoning and learning, so CIMON is designed to assist and to create a feeling of talking to a crewmate."
CIMON is an English-speaking robot that is approximate of the same size as that of a basketball. The AI-driven tool has been designed to make sure it helps human scientists to conduct various experiments on the space station. The bot will help German astronaut on ISS, Alexander Gerst, in clear interpretation of things being observed in the space. Airbus CIMON system engineer Philipp Schulien specified that the AI-driven tool will be there to answer queries of Gerst, including questions like "CIMON, could you please help me perform a certain experiment?" or "Could you please help me with the procedure?"
"What we're trying to do with CIMON is to increase the efficiency of the astronaut," IBM engineer Matthias Biniok told Reuters. "Right now our main mission is to support the astronauts with their daily tasks to save time because time is the most valuable and most expensive thing on the ISS."
Artificial Intelligence has until now being treated as a threat to the human kind on earth. This is mainly because the jobs that are suspected to be automated once robots are put to work on things that are being controlled by humans at the moment. With CIMON - the "flying brain", a new innovative way of initiating humans-robots relationship has been initiated, which will anyway yield productive results in every field wherever applied.
