'Hands-free' Clarissa to help astronauts

NEW DELHI: Scientists from NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and Xerox Corporation will demonstrate a voice-operated computer system called Clarissa at the Association for Computational Linguists' 25th annual meeting.

The system was developed in an effort to ease astronauts' workload. "Clarissa is a fully voice-operated 'virtual crew assistant,' enabling astronauts to be more efficient with their hands and eyes and to give full attention to the task while they navigate through the procedure using spoken commands," said Beth Ann Hockey, project lead on the team that developed Clarissa at NASA Ames.

Plans call for astronaut John Phillips to complete the Clarissa training procedure onboard NASA's International Space Station as early as June 27 in preparation for later use of Clarissa. "This will be the first use of the system in space," Hockey said.

Clarissa is "hands-free" and responds to astronauts' voice commands, reading procedure steps out loud as they work, helping keep track of which steps have been completed, and supporting flexible voice-activated alarms and timers.

Astronauts now perform about 12,000 complex procedures to maintain life-support systems, inspect space suits, conduct science experiments, perform medical exams and other routine tasks.