COSMIC: Emotionally Intelligent Agents to Support Mental and Emotional Well-being in Extreme Isolation: Lessons from Analog Astronaut Training Missions
It addresses mental well-being for astronauts in long-duration space travel, representing an incremental step by applying existing AI methods to a new domain.
The paper tackles the psychological challenges of extreme isolation in space missions by deploying COSMIC, an emotionally intelligent AI companion with an LLM and digital avatar, in an analog astronaut setting, showing it as the first formal evaluation of such technology for affective support.
As humanity pivots toward long-duration interplanetary travel, the psychological constraints of Isolated and Confined Environments (ICE) emerge as a primary mission risk. This paper presents COSMIC (COmpanion System for Mission Interaction and Communication) representing the inaugural investigation into the deployment of a high-fidelity, emotionally intelligent AI companion in an analog astronaut setting. By integrating a Large Language Model (LLM) architecture with a diffusion-based digital avatar interface, COSMIC transcends traditional task-oriented automation to provide longitudinal affective support. We detail a modular system architecture designed for temporal continuity through short- and long-term memory systems and outline a robust naturalistic observational framework for evaluating psychological resilience at the LunAres Research Station. This work constitutes the first formal submission in the field to evaluate the efficacy of state-of-the-art generative AI and synthesized visual empathy in mitigating the effects of extreme isolation.