“CIMON-2 Masters Its Debut on the International Space Station”
Within 4xxi, we couldn’t miss a chance to comment on this article.
Long story short the article focuses on the debut of an AI assistant on a space station. The AI assistant is called CIMON-2. It’s quite significant that CIMON-2’s responsibilities include voice-activated navigation, photo and video capture, audio reproducing and displaying information and instructions, documenting all experiments, tracking of items (such as inventory items), and running the inventory. However, CIMON-2 is not equipped with learning technologies yet and requires human involvement in learning. It’s a big step in the development and application of AI in space work and exploration anyway.
According to the article, it’s the second version of the drone, the first one was launched in 2016. We’d like to know how modern is the second version software. Everything related to Deep Learning is developing extremely fast now and AI models are being continuously improved, they are getting more complex each time, and meanwhile, they can become out-of-use in a year time.
Before (and maybe even now) it took years to launch most of the space programs as they required preliminary plans that became partly outdated by the launch time. It’s worth mentioning that it’s easier to update the software so now ISS (International Space Station) can keep up with all modern trends.
In the article, we could find an answer to our question of whether the assistant is autonomous and equipped with continuous communication with the IMB cloud. The question is crucial due to rapid development and improvement of AI.
If you turn to literature and cinema, you could find at least two possible versions of a spaceship assistant:
- a built into the ship assistant, a ubiquitous bodiless voice that can turn on conditioning system, play chess with you and turn your ship the other way if the captain allows.
- a drone that follows you and behaves human alike and can carry supplies or use camera.
Let me recall that building a ship integrated AI system is difficult as ISS was built by blocks and by different counties. This leads to the question: which ideas and options were considered and why did IBM & Co. decide to build a drone in the end?
Don’t forget that CIMON-2 is also designed to help astronauts cope with stress. It’s unlikely that the drone will help cope with stress judging by the drone’s looks (see here). It’d be fun to know what our amazing designs in 4xxi can suggest in this case.
Lets’s move on to other questions. Did you know that AI technologies can drive a car safely and drones allow to improve reaction to evade any flying object (you can google this).
In the future we’d like to find out that ISS will have put into operation own smart autopilot system that can correct ISS’s orbit or take the station away from space debris; now it’s managed by people in mission control centers and it’s pretty difficult. We hope this will happen quite soon.
