The Japanese Ministry of Education plans to place robot anglophones in schools across the country to help children improve their English.
According to a report by the national broadcaster NHK in Japan, the ministry will begin testing robots in April at about 500 schools nationwide. It will also provide students with study applications and "online chat tutorials" with native English speakers.
The education ministry has long been trying to improve students' language skills, NHK reports, but lacks the necessary funding to hire native speakers in every school. With the availability of English-speaking robots, he thinks he's found a much cheaper one choice.
NHK reports that Japanese students are "generally not good" when they speak or write in English.
Japan has the world's first robot tutor from 2009. It is called Saya and was tested in a class of fifth and sixth grade in Tokyo, according to Guardian at that time.
In Singapore and London there are already giant Japanese robots NAO and her Pepper Softbank that offer learning support.
No-Izolation based in Norway has developed the AV1 robot and has made it available to Scandinavian schools to help children with long-term illnesses stay in touch with their friends and class.
The robot is controlled remotely by the child through an application in mobile phone ή tablets. It is equipped with Wi-Fi wireless network and 2G/3G/4G mobile networks and runs on batteries so that it can participate with the students in the lesson inside the classrooms.
In Poland, Photon Entertainment builds a robot that teaches small children to encode.
Analysts predict that the educational robotics market will reach 1,7 billions of dollars up to 2023.
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