In January 2005, the International Space Station welcomed a new resident - Clarissa, a voice-enabled computer assistant. Astronauts worked with scientists, including ICSI's Manny Rayner, to develop the program. The program responded to voice commands by astronauts and guided them through some of the 12,000 complex procedures they must perform on board the ISS, such as maintenance on space suits. With Clarissa's help, astronauts did not have to scroll through PDF instruction manuals, leaving their eyes and hands free to complete tasks. Clarissa is thought to be the first use of a spoken dialogue system in space (assuming you don't count HAL, the murderous artificial intelligence agent from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Above, Beth Ann Hockey, who led the project, and Rayner try out the system. Photo credit: NASA.

For more information about Clarissa:

M. Rayner, B. A. Hockey, J.-M. Renders, N.Chatzichrisafis, and K. Farrell. Spoken Language Processing in the Clarissa Procedure Browser. ICSI Technical Report TR-05-005, April 2005

"Space Station Gets HAL-Like Computer," Maggie McKee, New Scientist, June 27, 2005