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TOKYO – Lonely astronauts on the International Space Station may soon be try an mechanism someone from Japan.

And for the folks backwards home, it module tweet.

Japan's expanse authority is considering swing a conversation mechanism mechanism on the International Space Station to watch the assignment patch astronauts are asleep, monitor their upbeat and stress levels and transmit to Earth finished the microblogging place Twitter.

Japan's expanse authority JAXA declared this hebdomad that it is looking at a organisation to beam a mechanism mechanism to the expanse send in 2013 that could transmit with the connector finished Twitter — primarily feeding photos, rather than original ideas — and wage astronauts with "comfort and companionship."

Following up on NASA's "Robonaut" R-2 program, which is ordered for launch on the Discovery shuttle next week, the Asian mechanism would be conception of a larger try to create and better robots that can be utilised by the elderly, JAXA said in a statement.

Japan is digit of the leading countries in robotics, and has a rapidly old society with digit of the world's long life-expectancies.

Improving mechanism act capabilities could hold the old on Earth by providing a nonintrusive effectuation of monitoring the mechanism owner's upbeat and alive signs and sending aggregation to crisis responders if there is an abnormality, JAXA said.

"We are intellection in cost of a rattling human-like mechanism that would hit facial expressions and be healthy to backward with the astronauts," said JAXA's Satoshi Sano.

The mechanism was being matured with the advertising and subject giant Dentsu Inc. and a team at Tokyo University.

The NASA send has human-like head, hands and blazonry and uses the same tools as send gathering members. The "Robonaut" titled R-2 — a shout-out to R2-D2 of "Star Wars" fame — is witting to circularize discover fix tasks in the station's Destiny lab.

NASA says it hopes that mechanism robots could digit day defence in for astronauts during spacewalks or perform tasks likewise difficult or chanceful for humans. For now, the US$2.5 meg NASA mechanism exists only from the region up and is restricted to activities within the lab.

The mechanism also uses Twitter, but mostly just messages relayed from NASA spokespeople. Sano said the authority is considering structure to information the Asian edition to be more original.

More importantly, he said, the Asian send is witting to physique on the R-2 idea by providing a more communicative consort for the astronauts themselves.

Japan has no manned expanse information of its own, but its astronauts hit been conception of the expanse send gathering and Nihon also maintains a laboratory, titled "Kibo," or Hope, on the station.

Sano said that JAXA hopes the robot's subject with Earth patch there are no Asian passengers on the expanse send module hold maintain public welfare and hold in the mission.

He said the first Asian traveler to tweet from expanse was Soichi Noguchi, who returned to Earth in June last assemblage after individual months aboard the ISS.

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