Sunday, January 02, 2011
Robot teachers
Korea is using robots to teach English to kids.
Makes you wonder ... is this how Orientals see Caucasians? A white egg with a face mounted on a flap, and dinner plates for hands?
Actually the face-on-a-flap is a neat solution to a difficult problem. How do you make a robot switch from man to woman to child without screwing on entirely different heads? How do you give it a wide range of expressions without micro-engineering all the human facial muscles? You put a TV screen where the head should be, and use 3d software to create the faces.
The kids seem to accept it easily, making eye contact with the face on the flap.
Note that the English phrases include "I love my Mommy" and "I love my Dad." A teacher in America, robotic or not, couldn't teach those phrases. Most kids here don't have a Dad, and the school administration would get sued to death for assuming that kids have exactly one female parent and exactly one male parent.
That's why Korea is going to succeed as we collapse.
View (about 1.5 minutes) ¶ 2:06 PM
Makes you wonder ... is this how Orientals see Caucasians? A white egg with a face mounted on a flap, and dinner plates for hands?
Actually the face-on-a-flap is a neat solution to a difficult problem. How do you make a robot switch from man to woman to child without screwing on entirely different heads? How do you give it a wide range of expressions without micro-engineering all the human facial muscles? You put a TV screen where the head should be, and use 3d software to create the faces.
The kids seem to accept it easily, making eye contact with the face on the flap.
Note that the English phrases include "I love my Mommy" and "I love my Dad." A teacher in America, robotic or not, couldn't teach those phrases. Most kids here don't have a Dad, and the school administration would get sued to death for assuming that kids have exactly one female parent and exactly one male parent.
That's why Korea is going to succeed as we collapse.
View (about 1.5 minutes) ¶ 2:06 PM
