Tokyo: The first humanoid robot in space made small talk with a Japanese astronaut and said it had no problem witÂh zero gravity on the IntÂerÂnational Space Station.
Footage released by the robot's developers today showed Kirobo performing its first mission on the station, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata to test its autonomous conversation functions.
Wakata says he’s glad to meet Kirobo, and asks the robotic companion how it feels about being in a zero-gravity environment. “I’m used to it now, no problem at all,” Kirobo quips. Kirobo is programmed to process questions and select words from its vocabulary to construct an anÂswer, instead of giving pre-programmed respÂoÂnses to specific questions.
The creator of the robot, ToÂmotaka Takahashi, saÂid nobody knew how well Kirobo would be able to answer Wakata’s questions.
Though Kirobo had some awkward pauses and Wakata spoke more slowly than usual at times in their chat earlier this month, Takahashi said conversations smoothed out over time.
“Through layers of communication, we were able to observe the initial stages of a relationship begin to develop between a human and a robot, and I think that was our biggest success” he said.
