One of two humanoid verbal communication robots, Kirobo is part of the Kibo Robot Project, and Toyota offered its expertise to this unique and exciting experiment to provide voice recognition to the little robonaut.
Kirobo is being joined in space by Japanese Commander of the ISS, Koichi Wakata, which has meant that after all these months the lead astronaut and robot have now been able to hold their first conversation – the first in history between a robot and human in space.
At 34cm high the little robonaut has now made history twice since September, as earlier in the year he became the first robot to speak in space. Not bad for one so small!
Kirobo is able to communicate in three ways. Utilising voice recognition technology designed by Toyota, his behaviour exhibits human-like feeling.
Firstly, he is an extremely good conversationalist. He is capable of answering and exchanging questions with humans.