News

Robot teacher can take roll and scold students

A primary school in Tokyo is testing a robot named Saya as a teacher. She–or it–is multilingual, can organize set tasks for pupils, call the roll, and get angry when the kids misbehave. In fact, she can express six basic human emotions: surprise, fear, disgust, anger, sadness, and happiness.

The humanoid is the result of 15 years of research by science professor Hiroshi Kobayashi at the University of Tokyo. Kobayashi originally developed Saya to replace office workers such as secretaries and receptionists in an effort to reduce expenses while maintaining some sort of "human" interaction.

The Japanese government is pouring $35 million into android science. Why the push? In seven years one in four Japanese will be over 65, which means the workforce is declining, pushing up wage costs for businesses and making recruitment difficult.

Full Story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=40256&tsp=1

Posted in:

Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.