TOKYO // The first humanoid robot in space may have taken one giant leap for robotkind by making small talk with a human astronaut. But Kirobo the tiny android has something else on its mind: what it will be getting for Christmas.
Footage released yesterday by the robot’s developers showed Kirobo performing its first mission in space, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata earlier this month to test unscripted, autonomous conversation functions.
Mr Wakata said he was glad to meet Kirobo, and asked his robotic companion how it felt being in a zero-gravity environment.
“I’m used to it now, no problem at all,” Kirobo quipped.
Kirobo, who weighs one kilogram and is 32 centimetres tall, is programmed to process questions and select words from its vocabulary to construct an answer, instead of giving preprogrammed responses to specific questions.
“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,” the creator of the robot, Tomotaka Takahashi, said.
Kirobo arrived at the International Space Station this summer and experiments with Kirobo will continue until it returns to Earth at the end of 2014.
In the meantime, the robot is looking forward to Christmas.
When asked what gift he would like to receive, Kirobo said: “I want a toy rocket. Let’s ask Santa Claus.”
Associated Press
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylinder turbo hybrid
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 390bhp
Torque: 400Nm
Price: Dh340,000 ($92,579
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Arda Atalay, head of Mena private sector at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Rudy Bier, managing partner of Kinetic Business Solutions and Ben Kinerman Daltrey, co-founder of KinFitz
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
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Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
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The biog
Hometown: Birchgrove, Sydney Australia
Age: 59
Favourite TV series: Outlander Netflix series
Favourite place in the UAE: Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque / desert / Louvre Abu Dhabi
Favourite book: Father of our Nation: Collected Quotes of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Thing you will miss most about the UAE: My friends and family, Formula 1, having Friday's off, desert adventures, and Arabic culture and people
UAE players with central contracts
Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Rameez Shahzad, Shaiman Anwar, Adnan Mufti, Mohammed Usman, Ghulam Shabbir, Ahmed Raza, Qadeer Ahmed, Amir Hayat, Mohammed Naveed and Imran Haider.
The specs
Common to all models unless otherwise stated
Engine: 4-cylinder 2-litre T-GDi
0-100kph: 5.3 seconds (Elantra); 5.5 seconds (Kona); 6.1 seconds (Veloster)
Power: 276hp
Torque: 392Nm
Transmission: 6-Speed Manual/ 8-Speed Dual Clutch FWD
Price: TBC
