Kirobo
Japan's first robot astronaut, companion to ISS commander Koichi Wakata.
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Kirobo is Japan's first robot astronaut, developed to accompany Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. It arrived on the ISS on August 10, 2013, aboard JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle Kounotori 4, which launched from Tanegashima Space Center on August 4, 2013. The name 'kirobo' combines the Japanese word for 'hope' (kibō) with the generic term 'robo' for robot.
Features
Kirobo stands about 34 cm tall, 18 cm wide, and 15 cm deep, weighing roughly 1 kg, and communicates in Japanese. Its abilities include voice and speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, telecommunications, facial recognition, and video recording. Designed for zero-gravity environments, it assists Commander Wakata in experiments, with the primary goal of studying human-robot interaction to enable robots to take more active roles in astronaut support.
Did You Know?
- A twin robot named Mirata, with the same characteristics, stayed on Earth as a backup crew member.
- Kirobo was developed by a collaboration including Dentsu, the University of Tokyo, Robo Garage, Toyota, and JAXA.
- Toyota created the voice recognition function, while VoiceText of Hoya Service provided speech synthesis.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Kirobo (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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