A robot called Kirobo has recently docked with the ISS. Kirobo is 13 inches tall and weighs just over
2 pounds, and was designed and built by several well known Japanese technology
companies, including Toyota Motor Corporation and Dentsu Corporation. Kirobo gets its name from the Japanese words
for ‘hope’ and ‘robot’ and will welcome the first Japanese commander of the
ISS, Koichi Wakata when he arrives in November/ December. After Wakata leaves, Kirobo will stay on the
ISS and take pictures, use social media, and communicate with people on earth.
Although Kirobo has voice recognition, facial recognition and can speak Japanese, I think Kirobo is a bit frivolous. A talking, twitter-posting robot doesn't seem to have any real use in space. The developers made Kirobo in a humanoid shape so that "humans can talk to it and feel some sort of closeness to it." I suppose the argument could be made that Kirobo will be able to help people connect with technology in space, but I believe that the world has bigger problems than how to send cute talking robots to space.
Kirobo seems cool, but I would agree with you that there isn't much point to it being made or being sent up to space.
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