Artemis astronauts will talk to artificial intelligence

NASA plans to use a special voice assistant designed on the basis of artificial intelligence to help the astronauts of the Artemis mission to the moon.

In science-fiction stories and movies, it is very common to use an artificial intelligence assistant for astronauts. For example, Captain Kirk, Spock and other astronauts of the movie “Star Trek” constantly talked to a computer called “Enterprise” and asked him about the status of the spaceship and the unfamiliar environment outside.

Now it seems that as NASA returns to human exploration of the moon, astronauts will actually talk to computers on their missions, and given that they are alone in their journey to new territories, having an AI assistant could be very useful.

When Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the new Orion spacecraft, first considered the design of a talking computer, engineers thought they could do it with just a laptop and an Amazon Echo Dot voice assistant on board the spacecraft. but according to “Rob Chambers” (Rob Chambers), Lockheed Martin’s director of civil and commercial space strategy, “it wasn’t that simple!”

Beyond the technical limitations, they had to overcome the potentially threatening behavior of a space computer during the journey, as seen in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike Star Trek’s intelligent assistant, the HAL 9000 computer in A Space Odyssey malfunctions, takes control of the spacecraft, and even fights the crew’s attempts to shut it down.

This is not just a concern raised in science fiction. This summer, “Blake Lemoine”, the former developer of artificial intelligence at Google, caused a lot of controversy by saying that the chat bot designed by them has become self-aware. This incident created a nationwide conversation about the level of consciousness and the possibility of artificial intelligence.

Such claims fuel a growing fear of smart technology that has long existed in popular culture. That one day artificial intelligence will achieve capabilities that will dominate humans. For this reason, after the suggestion of voice assistant, some raised the possibility of sabotage of artificial intelligence.

But Lockheed Martin and its partners, including NASA, believe that having a virtual voice assistant and the ability to make video calls will make it easier for astronauts to check information without having to be behind the controls. An issue that according to engineers can even cause more safety.

For this reason, the test version of this technology will go to the lunar orbit together with the Artemis 1 unmanned mission so that experts can check its capabilities in practice. This project is named after one of the companions of Artemis in Greek mythology, “Callisto”, and is supposed to provide the mission team with real-time answers about the state of the spacecraft, the amount of water reservoirs, battery level and other mission data.

The cost of this test is paid by the private companies partnering in this project. An Amazon Alexa assistant customized specifically for the mission has access to about 120,000 data readings, more than astronauts have had in the past. In addition, it has access to some additional information that was previously only provided by the mission’s ground control team.

For the first mission, there will be no astronauts in Orion, except for the mannequin in the cabin. But this 42-day space flight, by testing different orbits and re-entering the atmosphere, paves the way for sending crews to the moon in subsequent missions. Whether or not a virtual assistant will be included in future voyages will depend on the successful demonstration of this technology on Artemis 1.

To test Alexa, the mission control team will use video conferencing software provided by Cisco called WebEx. Cisco runs its software on an iPad installed inside the cabin, and cameras installed throughout the Orion’s cabin monitor its performance.

Callisto artificial intelligence test on the Orion spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center
Credit: NASA

In most cases, the virtual assistant answers questions like “Alexa, how fast is the Orion?” or “Alexa, what’s the temperature inside the cabin?” answers. According to Justin Nikolaus, Alexa’s voice designer on the project, the only thing the system can really control are the lights.

He added: “In terms of controlling the spacecraft, we do not have access to any mission-critical parts or software. “We will operate in Orion safely and only on a trial basis.” With these explanations, the voice assistant of this spacecraft may not seem very advanced. But one challenge was that the engineers had to make it possible for the device to detect the sound in a metal chamber.

The Orion’s acoustic conditions, with surfaces that are mostly metallic, were unlike anything the developers had encountered before. According to Nicholas, their learnings from the project are now being used in challenging audio environments on Earth, such as speech recognition in a moving car with the windows down.

The most significant change from Amazon’s ready-made devices on the market is that this system introduces a new technology that the company calls Local Voice Control, which allows Alexa to work without an Internet connection. While on the ground, Alexa is run under the cloud and by a central data center on the Internet platform.

But in deep space and when Orion is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from Earth, the time delay for the data to arrive will be very high. Even looking at future space missions to Mars, this delay could be on the scale of seconds to an hour for messages to be transmitted to the spacecraft en route to Mars, some 150 million kilometers away. For this reason, engineers built a dedicated computer to process data on the spacecraft.

Nicholas added about this: “This data is not something specific and known in advance, but real processing in real time. All this intelligence must be on the spacecraft itself, because we didn’t want to face problems due to the time delay of data transmission from the spacecraft to the ground and vice versa.”

Additionally, for questions that Alexa can’t answer offline, Callisto uses and routes signals from NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of radio dishes around the globe, to a cloud server on Earth. With this, Kalisto can support a wider range of requests, such as reading the news or reporting sports results, or even ordering toilet paper and garbage bags!

In fact, the designers have created this ability so that the astronauts in the future missions can also buy things from Amazon. Although immediate delivery to the destination of the moon is not done, for example, sending flowers to a spouse in a special situation can be one of the possible uses.

NASA’s Deep Space Network dish in Madrid
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cisco will also use NASA’s Deep Space Network to provide video conferencing. Astronauts can use this tool for “joint whiteboarding” sessions with their colleagues in Houston. Imagine how much it would have helped the Apollo 13 crew if something like this had been available in the past. For example, at that time NASA tried to talk them into fitting a round air filter into a square cavity without the aid of a video.

But broadcasting high-resolution images across the solar system is not easy, especially with such limited data capacity. According to Chambers, one of the reasons Lockheed Martin chose Cisco as a partner for this project was the company’s expertise in video compression.

On the other hand, while the signals are moving in space, the data may be distorted. Therefore, Cisco has also worked on error correction technology to smooth data transmission. Chambers added: “One of my colleagues at Cisco mentions that they are trying to transmit 4K quality, high bandwidth, gigabit-type Ethernet using a dial-up modem from the 1980s. “Obviously, the remote space network is very, very capable, but we are trying to make modern video conferencing possible with these optimizations.”

To create a customized virtual assistant, the engineers asked the astronauts for their opinions. One of their requests was to have a dictation service. Because most astronauts’ notebooks and pens float in the absence of gravity, and it is difficult to use a computer in such conditions. “If you’re not used to microgravity and you start typing on a keyboard attached to the cabin, your force on the keyboard will push your body away from it,” Nicholas pointed out.

But talking with the voice assistant provides astronauts with more possibilities. For example, in response to “Alexa, can you take me to the moon?” If it’s a Frank Sinatra song, it can play in the cabin!

Or if the astronaut asks, “Alexa, can you open and close the doors?” Fortunately, the answer is no. Chambers stressed that the system could not do anything that would put astronauts at risk. “We’re thinking a lot about this, not trying to sensitize them and have something like Cars Rising in mind,” he added.

But in any case, the software is complex and may show strange behavior through unexpected complications in various tasks, Chambers said, “What we do is we design the system in such a way that it is possible for this device to speak.” It does not exist with another device.

So if all goes according to plan, perhaps the most damage a real version of HAL can do is play pranks on an astronaut’s family and deliver them an unsolicited pizza from Amazon!

Cover photo: Astronaut David Bowman talking to the Hall 9000 computer in the 2001 film A Space Odyssey
Credit: Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images

Source: Mashable