Yes, it runs 'Doom': Satellite plays iconic game in world's 1st demonstration of orbital voice control
A satellite went knee-deep in the dead, after a voice command from the ground activated the Doom video game in space.
Key points
- PRETTY picked up the transmission, transcribed the command using on-board voice recognition, and then — just like a typical evening gamer—opened up Doom for a play session.
- The historic voice command on July 27— in part, "PRETTY play Doom Doom Doom"— came from a rooftop in Oslo, and was spoken at night by Jon Bergli Heier (LB9BJ).
- As anybody who uses voice-recognition software knows, there are challenges in transcriptions: nobody speaks in exactly the same way, and aspects such as accent or background noise can lead to misinterpretations.
"So we borrowed a line wrongly credited to Pippi Longstocking: 'I have never tried that before, so I should definitely be able to do that.'" The Norwegians spent 59 days and about 7200 NOK or $775 (pizza included) to reach PRETTY, helping make changes to the satellite software to pick up a voice.
Additional details
- (Image credit: Truls Johansen (LA7IJ), LA4O) This was no multiplayer gaming situation, but the satellite did create a report of its demon-slaying skills — and its ability to interpret the command.
- For example, perhaps deep-space radio signals could be detected via satellite, with an AI on board sending the most relevant data to operators after analyzing the work.
- Satellite work was not something our club did, and we had no budget for it," representative Eskil Hadland, call sign LB6AJ, said in the Tangara statement.
- But the pioneering voice command opens up new worlds for satellite work, the team says.
- Further work revealed the satellite's receiver channel was too wide to pick up the voice signal, leading to a fix to narrow the channel.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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