In Norway, Doom launched on a satellite by voice command — Space.com

Norwegian radio amateurs from Oslo activated the game Doom on the experimental PRETTY CubeSat, which operates with the participation of the European Space Agency, using a voice command. The command was transmitted from a rooftop in Oslo on July 27: the satellite received the signal, recognized the speech onboard, and launched the game. Space.com reports on the experiment.

Seven connection attempts

The experiment was coordinated on behalf of ESA by the OPS-SAT Space Lab. Radio amateurs made six unsuccessful attempts to contact the satellite during its passes over Poland and Norway between April and July. The seventh attempt, conducted by members of the Oslo Group of the Norwegian Radio Relay League, was successful.

The team spent 59 days and about 7,200 Norwegian kroner, or approximately $775, on working on the connection, including pizza expenses. During one of the previous transmissions, a recording of which the satellite relayed to Earth, the spoken words could not be recognized. It was later found that the satellite’s receiver channel was too wide to receive the voice signal, so it was narrowed.

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Voice recognition in orbit

The command “PRETTY play Doom Doom Doom” was transmitted at night from a rooftop in Oslo by Jon Bergli Hayer. PRETTY recognized the speech using its onboard system and generated a report containing a screenshot of the game, a transcription of the command, and signal diagnostics. The satellite also transmitted to Earth a recording of a command by Eskil Hadland.

The project used the open-source GNU Radio tools for signal processing and Sherpa-ONNX for speech recognition. A software developer at Tanagra Space said that similar technology could potentially help transmit distress signals such as “mayday” or “help” by radio from remote areas, so that a satellite could recognize them and send an alert to emergency services.