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A round, basketball-shaped autonomous assistant that is supposed to help astronauts with their space work. Sounds a lot like HAL-9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," right? CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) won't say, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," but the first-ever flying, autonomous, artificial intelligence-based robot is slated to head to the International Space Station (ISS) later this week. With any luck, CIMON will stay there for the foreseeable future. ..." "What we're trying to do with Watson AI services is imitate a human," Biniok said, adding that CIMON has a digital "mouth" and can express...

The world's first flying, autonomous, artificially intelligent (AI) astronaut assistant will soon get to work in space. Meet CIMON, the first AI-based assistance system for astronauts. CIMON was created by Airbus, in cooperation with IBM, to provide mission and flight assistance aboard the International Space Station. The 11-lb. (5 kilograms) round robot looks like a medicine ball and has an unforgettable face. CIMON has been trained to interact with European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst with photos and voice samples from Gerst. The bot is launching this June with other scientific equipment aboard the Dragon spacecraft on SpaceX's 15th resupply...