Meet Cimon, the New Virtual Assistant set to Help Aboard the ISS - Asgardia Space News

The rise of technology has given way to reliance on virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, for tasks like playing music, setting alarm clocks, and scheduling appointments. Currently, the Airbus company is engineering a similar mission assistant to help astronauts finish everyday tasks on the International Space Station. Airbus is working on the Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN (known as CIMON for short) in partnership with Space Administration at the German Aerospace Center and will be the first time artificial intelligence (AI) is used on the ISS in this way. CIMON is designed as a spherical, free-flying robot that can move independently around the station. It's about the size of a medicine ball, and weighs approximately 11 pounds.