http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirobo wrote:Kirobo: Toyota's Robot Astronaut Heading for International Space StationClick to play embedded YouTube video.
<<Kirobo is Japan's first robot astronaut. The robot will accompany Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. Kirobo will be sent to ISS ahead of Wakata in August in an unmanned rocket. Kirobo will be sent via a Kounotori unmanned resupply spacecraft scheduled to launch into space on 4 August from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center. The word "kirobo" itself is a portmanteau between "kiro" which means "hope" in Japanese and the word "robo", used as a generic short word for any robot.
Kirobo was developed by a collaborative effort between Dentsu, the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, Robo Garage, Toyota, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) under Japan Kibo Robot project. The University of Tokyo and Robo Garage worked on the robot hardware and motion generation; Toyota created the voice recognition function; and Dentsu created the conversation content and managed the project.
Kirobo is approximately 34 cm tall, 18 cm wide and 15 cm deep. It weighs about 1 kilogram and speaks Japanese. The robot's capabilities include voice and speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis and telecommunications, as well as facial recognition and video recording. Kirobo is specially designed to navigate zero-gravity environments and will assist Commander Wakata in various experiments. Its main goal is to see how well robots and human can interact, hopefully leading the way to robots taking more active roles in assisting astronauts on missions.>>
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