The crew at the International Space Station (ISS) will soon have have a humanoid robot visitor, called Kibo, which will be accompanying Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata when he takes command of the ISS next year.

The robot, which is a joint project involving Toyota, advertising company Dentsu, University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology and Kyoto University’s Robo Garage, is still being built but is expected to be ready to make the trip by the end of February 2013.

Weighing in at 1 kilogram and standing 34 centimetres high, Kibo will feature “voice recognition, natural language processing, voice synthesis, telecommunications functions, communication actions, facial recognition camera and a recording camera.”

Its purpose is to “…help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative” by pioneering a “…new style of human-robot interface”, according to Kibo’s website.

Source: Digital Trends