TOKYO — The first humanoid robot in space made small talk with a Japanese astronaut and said it had no problem with zero gravity on the International Space Station.
Footage released by the robot’s developers on Friday showed Kirobo performing its first mission on the station, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata to test its autonomous conversation functions.
Wakata says he’s glad to meet Kirobo, and asks the robotic companion how it feels about being in a zero-gravity environment.
‘‘I’m used to it now, no problem at all,’’ Kirobo quips.
Kirobo is programmed to process questions and select words from its vocabulary to construct an answer, instead of giving pre-programmed responses to specific questions.
Kirobo says he wants to ask Santa for a toy rocket.