IBM's Watson Is Going To Space (thenextweb.com) 59
Yesterday, IBM announced it would be providing the AI brain for a robot being built by Airbus to accompany astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). "The robot, which looks like a flying volleyball with a low-resolution face, is being deployed with Germany astronaut Alexander Gerst in June for a six month mission," reports The Next Web. "It's called CIMON, an acronym for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, and it's headed to space to do science stuff." From the report: It'll help crew members conduct medical experiments, study crystals, and play with a Rubix cube. Best of all, just like "Wilson," the other volleyball with a face and Tom Hanks' costar in the movie Castaway, CIMON can be the astronauts' friend. According to an IBM blog post: "CIMON's digital face, voice and use of artificial intelligence make it a 'colleague' to the crew members. This collegial 'working relationship' facilitates how astronauts work through their prescribed checklists of experiments, now entering into a genuine dialogue with their interactive assistant."
Whatever you do... (Score:2, Funny)
...don't hook it up to the pod bay doors.
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Sirius Ctbernetics Corporation (Score:2)
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is the primary manufacturer and supplier of androids, robots and autonomic assistants for the known universe. They are known for their catchy jingles and catchphrases, supplied by their Marketing Department.
They are not, however, known for the quality of their products.
Their primary claim to fame seems to be constructing just about everything with (unstable) advanced robotics and software. From doors, to lifts, to toaster ovens, drinks machine
Re: does not seem very useful (Score:2)
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Large computers in spacecraft will become necessary once you're far enough from Earth that latency over a comm link would be a problem. Though this is obviously not the case on ISS, this test will characterize any special problems that might arise in just running one of these things in microgravity, such as heat dissipation.
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This is just nothing more than a bit of paid advertising from IBM.
IBM provided the hardware and software for the avionics on the Space Shuttle . . . programmed in . . . IBM /360 Assembler! They chose that language because it had been around for long enough that NASA figured that all the bugs had been worked out, and the programmers understood the language well enough that it could be used for man-rated systems:
https://history.nasa.gov/compu... [nasa.gov]
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This is not embedded flight control hardware, but an advanced general-purpose machine. The basic mission of ISS is to characterize the response of people and their things to microgravity, radiation and other aspects of the long-term spacecraft environment.
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At least the astronauts can now play soccer.
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"...this one has a cute face and chats. That seems rather useless as well as potentially getting in the way of people as they attempt to move around..."
Which accurately describes a fair share of my co-workers already...but you can't turn them off, or stuff them in the closet.
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.... or stuff them in the closet.
Well, not without HR getting on you about it not being professional....
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"I'm all for robots, but only if they do something, this one has a cute face and chats"
But astronauts have to listen to the cue words when being ordered to do stuff the robot wants: "Cimon says..." :-)
HAL 9000 (Score:4, Interesting)
B -1 = A
M -1 = L
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NASA used to verify computer calcs multiple times using different algorithms to make sure the answers the computers were spitting out were correct.
Now we are putting an AI up there with some fuzzy neural network - sorry we call it DEEP learning now - trained on earth based datasets that doesn't give deterministic answers. And it apparently has its own propulsion...
What could possibly go wrong? If I was the astronaut, I wouldn't be going within 100m of that thing while I'm in my space s
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Actually, NASA used real computers [wikipedia.org] to double check the calculations. Especially in the early days, but it persisted long into the Space Shuttle program in the 80s. (See Katherine Johnson [wikipedia.org]. If that name sounds familiar, she's one of the three African-Americans documented in Hidden Figures (book and movie) who made a name for herself for calculating trajectories fro
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Explicitly denied by Dr. Chandra in the novel 2010.
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"Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" seems like an adequate description of Watson. :-)
A PR Triumph (Score:1)
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Watson is more of a marketing ploy then actually a useful implementation of technology.
H&R Block uses Watson, and still when my Taxes have gone beyond what you can fill out on the EZ form. The Tax accountant needed to do a lot of additional work, and had to bring in her supervisor for additional assistance. All I really got was a spinning icon like in the old browsers, to show me that it is doing something.
What I wax expecting Watson to do, is analysis all the other clams before it. Find additional sta
IBM (Score:2)
"Open the pod bay doors, CIMON."
Re:IBM (Score:4, Funny)
Arthur C. Clarke (Score:2)
Perfectly predictable what most responses will be about!
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SPAAAAAAAACE (Score:1)
Impressive (Score:1)
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save it (Score:2)
CIMON (Score:4, Insightful)
Volleyball shaped, with a simple face?
How is this NOT named Wilson?
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Volleyball shaped, with a simple face?
How is this NOT named Wilson?
Copyright. The MPAA would bankrupt IBM. Just sending the attorneys and judge to hear the case in the ISS's jurisdiction would cost a fortune.
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Volleyball shaped, with a simple face?
How is this NOT named Wilson?
Copyright. The MPAA would bankrupt IBM. Just sending the attorneys and judge to hear the case in the ISS's jurisdiction would cost a fortune.
Could have been worse. What if they had called it Mickey?
Who is CIMON? (Score:3)
One of Cimon’s greatest exploits was his destruction of a Persian fleet and army at the Battle of the Eurymedon river in 466 BC.
Is this really the android we want to be sharing the confined space of a space station with.
What constitutes an acronym these days? (Score:3)
"It's called CIMON, an acronym for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, and it's headed to space to do science stuff."
C rew
I nteractive
M obile
C ompanion
looks like it spells CIMC to me. If they really wanted it to have a name out of an acrony why not CARLIE for Crew Autonomous Robotic Lifelike Interactive Entity?
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"It's called CIMON, an acronym for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, and it's headed to space to do science stuff."
C rew
I nteractive
M obile
C ompanion
looks like it spells CIMC to me. If they really wanted it to have a name out of an acrony why not CARLIE for Crew Autonomous Robotic Lifelike Interactive Entity?
I was wondering that too, but it's an acrostic [dictionary.com], which is definition 3:
C rew
I nteractive
MO bile
companio N
But the real question is "Is it a bum looker [hulu.com]"?
Isn't this Weatley? (Score:2)
Airbus made GERTY, yet again life imitates movies. (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Gerty was an AI Robot with a face much like this volleyball one that served to assist the human responsible maintaining He3 mining on the Moon the in the 2009 film Moon.