ASIA-PACIFIC-JAPAN, September 5, 2014 – A little robot has recently achieved what few men have done before: speak in outer space. On August 21, the robot astronaut Kirobo uttered the first words ever spoken by a robot in space.
"On August 21, 2013, a robot took one small step toward a brighter future for all," Kirobo said.
The announcement of his first words was made by Dentsu on September 5.
The robot’s first words serve as a prelude to the first outer space conversation experiment between a person and robot. The experiment aims to explore the idea of humans and robots coexisting in the future.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, first Japanese commander of the International Space Station (ISS), will be part of the experiment and is set to arrive at his post later this year.
Kirobo arrived at the ISS on August 10. The robot is one of two humanoid communication robots developed under the Kibo Robot Project, a research project led by the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, ROBO GARAGE Co., and Toyota Motor Corporation with the assistance of JAXA. In Japanese, "Kibo" means "hope."
