CIMON 2 is a computer assistant (助手). It was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) on December 5th, 2019. It was designed to work there for three years to help astronauts. Actually, the International Space Station is a science lab in space. Usually astronauts stay in the ISS for five or six months. Can you imagine how boring it is to live in a small space with just five other people for six months?
So CIMON was created with two jobs in mind. One is helping astronauts with tasks. The other is trying to be "someone" astronauts can talk to. It is a robot with a face which was created by the European airplane company, Airbus. It can move where it needs to go.
Helping astronauts is easy for CIMON—it can see, hear, understand, and speak. Its "mouth" is a loudspeaker that can be used to talk or play music. The brain behind CIMON was provided by IBM. CIMON can understand not just what people say, but what they mean. CIMON can answer the astronauts, or use its screen to show pictures or documents. CIMON has several cameras, which can take pictures and videos to help astronauts keep records of experiments.
The more difficult part of CIMON's job is being a companion for the astronauts. The first CIMON could understand what people were saying and mastered more than 1,000 sentences. In one video, CIMON seemed to become confused(困惑) as Mr. Gerst spoke with another astronaut.
CIMON 2 has been improved so that it can find out how people are feeling. The goal for CIMON is to be a calm, trusted friend that astronauts can talk to when they don't want to talk with others.
