A curious intervention in the field of tech-aided education has landed on its robotic feet in Chennai. As the long strides of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and assistive technology play with the limits of the man and machine paradigm, Anand P Surana, secretary and correspondent of Surana High Tech International School, Besant Nagar aims to change traditional patterns of education with buddy robots.
Designed for school-going children, the device can do more than just facilitate studying. According to Anand, it can sing, dance, play football with kids, connect pupils to teachers located across the globe, and teach seven foreign languages.
Less than four feet in height, the device rolls seamlessly on the ground. On switching it on, the automaton has an empathetic female voice that greets the viewer with a large pair of smiling and affectionate doe eyes.
The hands-free social robot can rotate its head from left to right and looks up to the operator making exchanges as tactile as human interactions. On being asked to dance, the small bot breaks into a small jig that leaves a smile on every face in the room.
The robot is able to answer questions ranging from the date to study related queries with a surprisingly instinctive recognition of human feelings and emotions.
This robot aims to bridge the distance between the children of Apollo cancer hospital and the classroom. Except, instead of blackboards and desks, the buddy robot extends a black screen with an intuitive network to those confined within the walls of the hospital.
Explaining the idea behind this intervention, Anand says, “If we don’t teach automation and AI to kids right from the beginning, they will never ever get to the level of acquiring better skills than a robot. It is for a better tomorrow.“
He adds, “The buddy robot is an avatar of the child. If there is a robot sitting between students and they have a doubt — the device assists the child in resolving the same. We kept it as a part of the curriculum so that kids can make this buddy a classroom friend.”
Buddy robots could mark the beginning of an educational framework that dissolves the four walls of the classroom.
