Kirobo

Kirobo is Japan's first robot astronaut, developed by University of Tokyo and Tomotaka Takahashi, to accompany Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. Kirobo arrived on the ISS on August 10, 2013, on JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle Kounotori 4, an unmanned resupply spacecraft launched August 4, 2013 from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center. A twin to Kirobo, named Mirata, was created with the same characteristics, and stayed on Earth as a backup crew member. The word "kirobo" itself is a portmanteau of , which means "hope" in Japanese, and the word , used as a generic short word for any robot.

==Development== Kirobo was developed by a collaborative effort between Dentsu, the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, Robo Garage, Toyota, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). The University of Tokyo and Robo Garage worked on the robot hardware and motion generation, Toyota created the voice recognition function and Dentsu created the conversation content and managed the project. VoiceText of Hoya Service provided speech synthesis.