NASA shares image of smiley floating robots that live on the International Space Station – New York Post

There is no shortage of sci-fi robot companions Luke Skywalkers robot buddies C3PO and R2D2 and Jimmy Neutrons robot-dog Goddard come to mind.

Astronauts aboard theInternational Space Stationhave some real-life robotic friends.

Astrobee and Project CIMON are two initiatives to develop robots to help space crews operate in zero gravity.

Astrobee, designed byNASA, is a group of three cubed-shaped robots that can fly around the ISS, grip pipes to stabilize themselves and have cameras for seeing their surroundings.

The set of three robots are aptly named Queen, Honey and Bumble as theyre busy bees aboard the ISS, carrying out simple tasks like taking inventories to reduce the burden on the astronauts.

Astrobees robots can be manually operated by teams on Earth or be programmed to work autonomously.

Queen, Honey and Bumble replaced an existing group of floating bots and serve as an upgrade on the ISS.

SPHERES, the first group of flying bots aboard the ISS, were deployed in 2006 and have been put to use forover 500 hoursalongside astronauts.

One of the aspirations for Astrobee is to design software advanced enough that the robots canmanage spacecraft upkeepon Gateway, the unmanned space outpost set to launch in 2024.

Its a lofty goal as the ISS hasnever been vacantin its 22-year history and is reliant on humans.

Meanwhile, the German-funded Project CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile companiON) has developed a similar robot thats slightly more humanoid.

Cimon responds to verbal commands from astronauts and has an LCD screen for displaying the bots face.

Like the Astrobee bots, Cimon can propel itself about the station and complete basic assignments in service of the astronauts.

Both the first and second generations of Cimon were brought to the ISS byElon Musks space travel companySpaceX.

Part of Cimons initiative is to help astronauts deal with the isolation that comes with being in space after all, everyone the astronauts know are living miles below them on Earth.

Astronauts can talk to Cimon the way that Earth-bound humans talk to an Alexa or Siri whether thats conversing or accessing the computers database of information.

Floating robots are carving out a special niche aboard the ISS, working to serve as an astronauts right-hand robot.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.

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NASA shares image of smiley floating robots that live on the International Space Station - New York Post