It has been reported that a robot-astronaut produced by Toyota and their partners in Japan has recently returned from Space. “Kirobo” has returned to earth after working on board the International Space Station and has picked up two Guinness World Records on its way.
The robot spent 18 months on the ISS. During this period it conducted the first conversation experiment between a person and a robot in Space. According to Toyota, “This helped advance research into how humans and robots might co-exist in the future.”
Kirobo returned to earth on a cargo supply craft. It landed in the Pacific Ocean off California. When it got back to Japan last week its first words were “From up above, the Earth glowed like a blue LED.”
The world records were given to Kirobo by Erika Ogawa, Guinness World Records’ Japan Vice President. The citation on the certificates says, “The first companion robot in space is Kirobo (Japan),　which arrived at the International Space Station on 9 August 2013” and “The highest altitude for a robot to have a conversation is 414.2 km above mean sea level and was achieved by Kirobo (Japan) on the International Space Station on 7 December 2013.”
