June 23, 2005 | Back

NASA, Xerox Unveil 'Virtual Crew Assistant'

Filed under category: Transportation

Intelligent conversation with robots - long the bread and butter of science fiction authors - soon may take another step closer to reality for astronauts on the International Space Station. Called Clarissa, the system was developed in an effort to ease astronaut workload. "Clarissa is a fully voice-operated 'virtual crew assistant,' enabling astronauts to be more efficient with their hands and eyes and to give full attention to the task while they navigate through the procedure using spoken commands," said Beth Ann Hockey, project lead on the team that developed Clarissa at NASA Ames.

Clarissa is "hands-free" and responds to astronauts' voice commands, reading procedure steps out loud as they work, helping keep track of which steps have been completed, and supporting flexible voice-activated alarms and timers. Astronauts now perform about 12,000 complex procedures to maintain life-support systems, inspect space suits, conduct science experiments, perform medical exams and other routine tasks. The Xerox methodology allows Clarissa to more accurately analyze each utterance. It can recognize words, sentences and word context and can act on a variety of commands phrased in different ways. Sounds like Clarissa may be a suitable spouse replacement too.

> Source: Xerox
> Estimated price: N/A
> Date released/expected: N/A

Posted on June 23, 2005 09:51 PM

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