Robot Simon 2, which replaces its predecessor from last year, is able to identify astronauts' expressions and emotions and ease the feeling of loneliness in space

• Brett Greenstein, IBM vice president with first markup // Archive photo: Reuters

This week on Sunday, SpaceX's Dragon Space capsule docked at the International Space Station and delivered research and supply tools to the station. One of the tools brought with the capsule is a circular robot called Simon 2, which can recognize faces to interact with astronauts, perform gestures and also identify their emotional needs and respond accordingly.

Mark 2 replaces the Mark 1 robot that was sent to the space station in 2018, and stayed with the astronauts and communicated with them throughout his stay at the station as he navigated independently, until he returned from it earlier this year.

The purpose of the robot, which was designed by the European Airbus company at the German Space Center and uses sophisticated artificial intelligence based on IBM's Watson software, was to assist the team in its various missions in space and to remind them of their experiments and operations in space. But now the robot can not only help but really understand the meaning of things and identify moods, which is a huge advantage in a small, isolated space station where the crew alone can not escape the human pressure remover.

Mattias Binyouk, the leading software architect for Westson Software in Germany, says that "While Simon first assisted astronauts in terms of information, current software has the ability to understand what they are feeling and to adapt to their emotional state. This is a new experiment in our process of working with the space station. The experiment is being run because research shows that a demanding task is very stressful for people, and the way to relax is when there is another team member. "

Photo Archive: Mark 1 on Space Station courtesy of ESA

Beyond the emotional capabilities Mark 2 has the power of computation and artificial intelligence control to a whole new level and will accompany the team for 3 years, with a more advanced generation in the future to upload information straight from the station to the cloud and create a much better virtual work environment for the team.

Simon 2 has two face recognition cameras as well as five others to navigate at an independent station as well as microphones and other aids. Like its predecessor, it was printed in 3D, and its shape is similar to that of a basketball. Since Mark 1 came to Earth before Mark 2 was launched, researchers were able to upgrade the new robot based on the information gathered in the first study and improve Mark 2's work.

And a fun fact to end: The robot's name is named after Professor Simon Wright, the flying brain from the Japanese manga series Captain Future.