Robotic teacher makes children laugh, and cry

Published 10:07 pm Wednesday, March 11, 2009

TOKYO — Japan’s robot teacher calls roll, smiles and scolds, drawing laughter from students with her eerily lifelike face. But the developer says it’s not about to replace human instructors.

The robot teacher, called Saya, can express six basic emotions — surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness — because its rubber skin is being pulled from the back with motors and wiring around the eyes and the mouth.

“Robots that look human tend to be a big hit with young children and the elderly,” Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and Saya’s developer, said Wednesday. “Children even start crying when they are scolded.”

First developed as a receptionist robot in 2004, Saya was tested in a real Tokyo classroom earlier this year with a handful of fifth- and sixth-graders, although it still can’t do much more than call out names and shout orders like “Be quiet.”

The children had great fun, Kobayashi recalled, tickled when it called out their names. Still, it’s just remote-controlled by a human watching the interaction through cameras, he said.

Noel Sharkey, robotics expert and professor at the University of Sheffield, believes robots can serve as an educational aid in inspiring interest in science, but they can’t replace humans.

“It would be delusional to think that such robots could replace a human teacher,” he said. “Leading scientists, engineers and mathematicians, almost without exception, talk about that one teacher who inspired them. A robot cannot be that kind of inspirational role model.”

Kobayashi said Saya is just meant to help people and warns against getting hopes up too high for its possibilities.

“The robot has no intelligence. It has no ability to learn. It has no identity,” he said. “It is just a tool.”

But would he create a robot in human form, say, a fantasy friend with movie-star looks?

“Sure,” he said, “If you’re willing to pay.”

That made-to-order robot will cost about 5 million yen ($51,000), he said.