In Interstellar, TARS is the robot with adjustable settings for humor, honesty, and self-preservation.
TARS is a former Marine tactical robot assigned to the Endurance mission, which travels through a wormhole near Saturn to search for habitable worlds. Unlike a humanoid machine, TARS has a modular rectangular design made from rotating sections. This allows the robot to move across difficult terrain and perform physical tasks in space.
The crew can adjust TARS’s personality parameters, including its humor level, honesty level, and independent operating ability. These settings provide some of the film’s comic moments while also showing how the machine remains a practical mission tool. TARS is voiced by Bill Irwin, whose performance is mostly heard through the robot’s distinctive synthesized speech.
CASE is another robot on the Endurance and has a similar modular design, but TARS is the character specifically associated with the adjustable humor and honesty settings. Interstellar was directed by Christopher Nolan and released in 2014, with Matthew McConaughey playing astronaut Joseph Cooper.