A Crew Was Accused Of Being Mean By An ISS Robot

Parvati Misra - Dec 11, 2018

Astronaut Alexander Gers was accused of being mean by the International Space Station bot CIMON after their talk in space.

Crew Interactive Mobile Companion (CIMON in short) is an AI robot developed similarly to the virtual assistants Siri or Alexa by Airbus in Bremen and Friedrichshafen, Germany.

“Be nice, please,” was one of CIMON’s first interactions with the European Space Agency (ESA in short) astronaut Alexander Gerst in a European Space Agency’s recently released video on Friday.

Arrived on the ISS earlier this year, with the weight of 5 kilograms and a monitor at its center, CIMON purpose is to support crew member by presenting or elaborating necessary information to perform scientific researches and maintenances. Also, CIMON is developed to boost the crew morale by providing them with entertainment.

The conversation started with CIMON replying Gerst’s simple command. The AI engaged in chitchat. Following was a request by Gersk for the robot to play a favorite song of his, which is “The Man-Machine” by a German band called Kraftwerk. After that, Gersk told the robot to stop the music, to his surprise, CIMON replied with “Be nice, please.” As CIMON liked the music and did not want to stop.

It started to get weird when CIMON began to ask a question about the intentions of Gersk. “Don’t you like it here with me?”. Following with the accuse “Don’t be so mean.” which earned an astonished glance from Auñón-Chancellor. Besides, the robot even thought that the astronaut was mean due to his being hungry, to which it said “I can hear your stomach roaring … it’s lunchtime.”

CIMON also has other functions such as mobile videography and photography, documenting experiments, maintaining an inventory and searching for objects.

Its ability to hear, see and comprehend what it was observing is also met with the satisfactory of the developers and Gersk.

CIMON will likely to receive further improvements and updates from its developers. Moreover, the relief is CIMON does not take hold of the control of the ISS’s systems like how the HAL 9000 was able to with the space shuttle in 2001 film A Space Odyssey. However, the developers need to consider dealing with its insecurity.