Japan: World's first talking robot astronaut set to go to space

Japan is set to send the world’s first talking robot-astronaut to space.

Yorichika Nishijima, the Kirobo project manager - named after “kibo” or hope in Japanese and “robot - said in Tokyo that Russia was the first to travel outer space, the US was the first to reach moon, but they wanted Japan to the first to send a robot-astronaut, which has the ability to communicate with humans, in space, Stuff.co.nz reported.

The experiment is a joint collaboration between advertising and PR company Dentsu, the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Robo Garage and Toyota.

CEO of Robo Garage and associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Tomotaka Takahashi, said that he hopes that robots like Kirobo, which can hold conversations, will eventually be used to assist astronauts who work in the space.

Kirobo is just about 34 centimetres tall and weighs about 1 kilogram and is set to be launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on August 4, this year.