TOKYO--Lonely astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) may soon be getting a robot friend from Japan. Japan's space agency is considering putting a talking humanoid  robot on the ISS to watch the work while astronauts are asleep, monitor their health and stress levels and communicate to Earth through the microblogging site Twitter. Japan's space agency JAXA announced this week that it is looking at a plan to send a humanoid robot to the space station in 2013 that could communicate with the ground through Twitter--primarily feeding photos, rather than original ideas --and provide astronauts with "comfort and companionship". Following up on US NASA's "Robonaut" R2 program, which is set for launch on the Discovery shuttle next week, the Japanese robot would be part of a larger effort to create and refine robots that can be used by the elderly, JAXA said in a statement. Japan is one of the leading countries in robotics and has a rapidly aging society with one of the world's longest life expectancies. Improving robot communication capabilities could help elderly people on Earth by providing a nonintrusive  means of monitoring the robot owner's health and vital signs and sending information to emergency responders if there is an abnormality, JAXA said. "We are thinking in terms of a very humanlike robot that would have facial expressions and be able to talk with the astronauts," said JAXA's Satoshi Sano. The robot was being developed with the advertising and communications giant Dentsu Inc and a team at Tokyo University. The NASA project has a humanlike head, hands and arms and uses the same tools as station crew members. The "Robonaut" called R2 is intended to carry out maintenance tasks in the station's Destiny lab. NASA says it hopes that humanoid robots could one day stand in for astronauts during spacewalks or perform tasks too difficult or dangerous for humans. For now, the $2.5 million NASA robot is limited to activities within the lab. From the passage we can know   _  .
robots could completely take the place of human astronauts in the future the robot program, having cost $2.5 million, can carry out all tasks many Japanese universities joined in the robot program future astronauts will become less lonely and more comfortable with the help of the robot