NASA Phoenix Lander CyberTwin

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wanted a CyberTwin virtual agent for their Phoenix Lander to deal with the many questions being asked about its exploration of Mars.

The deployment of a CyberTwin to NASA’s Second Life Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft enabled the public to get quick answers to questions about the Phoenix spacecraft, its mission, and the prospects of finding signs of ancient life.

Tom Soderstrom, CTO for the office of the CIO of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said:

“The good news about Second Life is that you know a person is always at the other side of an avatar. For enterprises, such as NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that’s also sometimes the bad news [as] it’s often too resource-intensive, but if no one is “manning” the avatar, people get bored and walk away. Instead, in addition to the people-driven avatars, we [wanted] to have automated greeters, or cyber-robots, that could help educate the public.”

Soderstrom says NASA plans to further the use of cyber robots in Second Life and is looking at using the technology for expert training as it expands the mission information it makes available to the public.