The new 'roommate' of the ISS is intended as a technology experiment to demonstrate the cooperation between humans and intelligent machines. Its name 'CIMON' stands for 'crew interactive mobilecompanion'. The development and construction of the interactive astronaut assistant was commissioned by the Space Administration of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and implemented by Airbus in Friedrichshafen and Bremen. Watson AI technology from the IBM Cloud serves as the voice-controlled artificial intelligence. 'CIMON' uses Watson AI for text, speech and image processing, for finding specific information and insights, such as information on the course of experiments and the interpretation of moods and feelings. The artificial assistant can individually train and enhance these skills in the context of its respective application. The human aspects of the assistance system - such as its face - were co-developed and supervised by scientists from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich.

The project team from DLR, Airbus, IBM and LMU has been working on the realization of the robot since August 2016. "CIMON is unique in this form worldwide," summarizes Dr. Christian Karrasch, Project Manager at DLR Space Administration in Bonn. "This experiment is intended to show the extent to which it is possible to support the astronauts in the European Columbus module of the ISS in their work and, above all, to relieve them of routine tasks. Ideally, this would allow the astronauts to make even better and more effective use of their time. We are breaking new ground here and with 'CIMON' we are on the threshold of what is technologically feasible," Karrasch continues.

CIMON will be weightless as early as March 9, 2018 during the 31st DLR parabolic flight campaign in Bordeaux. In particular, orientation, navigation and steering will be tested in order to be optimally prepared for use on the ISS - in permanent weightlessness. In June 2018, 'CIMON' will then travel to the ISS on board the American Space-X-15 space transporter. There it will be received by German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst. After a functional test, the German astronaut will work with his artificial crew colleague three times - the agenda includes experiments with crystals, with the Rubik's cube and a medical experiment in which 'CIMON' will be used as a flying camera.

At its premiere in space, the artificial assistant does not yet have all the capabilities envisaged by its developers: "In the medium term, we also want to focus on group effects that develop in small teams over a long period of time and can occur during long-term missions to the moon and Mars. The social interaction between man and machine, between astronaut and flight attendant equipped with emotional intelligence, could play an important role in the success of these missions," explains Till Eisenberg, project manager at Airbus. The engineers are also interested in the processing of large amounts of data (big data) and its systematic processing (data mining).