"Avatar will go to the board." Robot in a rural school

The second-grad man Savely from the village near Kaliningrad, due to an injury, cannot go to school. Instead, this is done by a robot avatar - he answers at the board and communicates with classmates. For a sick child, this is a chance not to fall out of school life. True, there were also those who scared the future, which occurred in a separate rural school.

The school of the future in the village of Bolshoi Isakovo five kilometers from Kaliningrad is not in vain. Many people dream of getting into this municipal rural school - here it seems, they are trying to overtake time. On the roof there are solar panels, in the yard - windmills for the production of electricity and recently installed innovative, fully automated greenhouse. In the classes - interactive panels for training, there is a laboratory of robotics.

We go along a wide corridor to the sector of junior school to see one of the last know-how.

- Here, look. Children call it R2-D2, by analogy with the Robot-Dode from Star Wars,-the system administrator Andrei Ipatiev leads us to the school office.

An unusual student - a white plastic robot - is right now at the board. He turns his head after the teacher, looks back at classmates.

This is a robot of the remote presence of the RBOT-100. And the second -grader Savely controls it - from the neighboring village, lying in his bed in front of the laptop.

Now everything is different, I can communicate with friends, move the robot

“In general, his name is the avatar,” says 8-year-old Sava about his robot. We don’t see a boy, but he sees and hears us perfectly through a video camera built into the robot. - Previously, I just sat at home, completed homework, talked with the teacher along the zoom. And now everything is different, I can communicate with friends, move the robot.

In the fall, Savely failed and broke three vertebrae in the thoracic region. For several months, I had to forget about the school attendance. But thanks to the avatar, Sava "comes" to class every day.

“The son was injured, but it was necessary to continue their studies,” says Savely Mom Natalya . - I came to the director, explained the situation, and he said that there is just a robot, now we are testing it and will be able to connect to him. Son is very happy, this is better than if he was chained to the house.

Savely is a young gamer, so for him avatar management is not a problem. Through the built -in video camera, he sees what is happening around, can communicate with the teacher and classmates - and his own, and not in a synthesized voice. The controlled by Savoy Avatar goes to the board, to the school corridor, it becomes recharging.

In general, the management process is very simple. It is enough to insert the flash drive into the laptop

- The robot allows the child to be present remotely in the educational audience, work in the lesson, interact with teachers. Even if it happens that the child will turn off the microphone, there is a speech synthesizer on board the robot, he can type words on the keyboard, ”says Ipatiev. - In general, the management process is very simple. It is enough to insert the flash drive into the laptop, the second flash drive is with me. A huge plus of the robot is autonomy. Inside the housing is a 45 amper-hour helium battery, which allows the child to attend the classes all day. Another huge advantage is that the entire stream of information passes through a protected server provided by manufacturers, which completely eliminates interception and connection by attackers.

The teacher of Sava Natalya Latysheva admits: to see the robot instead of the child at first was unusual:

- At first we were even a little scared, it was strange. They thought why he was brought, why? And then we heard Savely's voice - and immediately realized that everything would be fine.

Classmates, however, are accustomed quickly and now in the robot they see Savely, simply temporarily in unusual form.

- Of course, it is better when Sava in the classroom, when he walks normally, plays, studies. But if necessary - then normal. At least I can talk to him, communicate, ”says Sava Pasha's best friend.

The school bought Avatar on a grant of the Ministry of Education of the region, for 250 thousand rubles. The RBOT-100 remote presence robot has been produced in Russia and works on domestic software.

He worked with us as an exhibit, and then suddenly turned out to be an employee

In an advanced rural school, scientific and technical creativity is developing, the school team represented Russia three times at the World Cup in robotics, and reached the quarter-finals. The robot was bought for training and did not think that the educational process would turn into such an unexpected direction.

- We make robots ourselves. And this is a big beautiful example of the robot. We used it in educational events - so that children have fun and interesting. He worked with us as an exhibit, and then suddenly turned out to be an employee, ”says the director of the school of the future Alexei Golubitsky .

- We decided to try to use it for Savely. We were already in a similar situation when the child was injured and was at home, teachers came to him earlier. But now our school is crowded, instead of a thousand students, 1900 children are studying. And walking to everyone is simply physically there is no way. In addition, Saveliy does not live in our village, but in another, it would be very inconvenient to go to the teacher physically to him, ”said Tamara Makhova, deputy director of the school.

The effect of presence

The first robots at remote management were developed back in 2007.

A person has a feeling of complete presence

-The first we had a robot police in Perm, an iron machine for 400 kg weighing. They were supposed to be managed by police officers, and we created a remote management system, ”says Aleksey Knyazev, Director General of RBOT. -It was then that the idea arose that it is necessary to promote television access and make a cheaper robot. In 2007, we made several robots like the RBOT-100, patented the design. The appearance of the model is still used, and inside everything has changed, starting from the board. And another video has already begun - it began with a small picture, and now HD. A person has a feeling of complete presence.

The cost of such a model on the company's website is from 450 thousand rubles. Robots like an avatar are today used in libraries, shopping centers. In one of the Moscow car dealerships, the robot talks about new car models, and you can also get a consultation through it. Moreover, employees with disabilities manage them, and they live in other Russian cities, Knyazev notes.

And either dad would carry them in his arms at school and would break their arms and legs, or they controlled such a robot from the house

One of the first school robots appeared in Ryazan as part of an educational experiment in 2015. Later they began to be used in other schools.

- When there are robots in schools, teachers find a solution. In Moscow there are "crystal children" (suffering from a rare genetic disease, in which the bones are not enough collagen, which leads to multiple fractures. - SR) , brother and sister. And either dad would wear them in his arms at school and would break their arms and legs, or they controlled such a robot from the house. Another boy was with leukemia, he then recovered and began to go to school himself. In the meantime, he was on chemotherapy, he was forbidden to not pick up anything. Therefore, they used robots, ”says Knyazev.

Such a robot is sterile, “just like furniture,” the developer emphasizes, which is important in pandemic conditions. It was planned to use them in children's chambers of intensive care, for communication between children and parents, but there are a number of problems, including ethical ones.

- After all, there is a delicate situation - the child can be nervous. And I do not know if our robots are used now in hospitals to communicate children and parents, ”says Alexei. -We need to understand that we can not always give a robot control to the operator-through the robot they can see something superfluous, there is a law on medical secret, we have to limit access somewhere. At the same time, the robot itself can not always go carefully for charging between droppers on the machine, we need people's help.

Teachers will be replaced soon by robots-teacher

Now they are also talking about robots in many Kaliningrad schools. According to Alexei Golubitsky, several school principals called him for details. But this know-how scared some Kaliningraders.

“Perhaps this is convenient, but! It feels like we will be savages soon-to sit at home, and all applications and robots will do everything for us,” users wrote in social networks, discussing publications about the avatar in local media. “The Robot is sad ... Where will this lead? Soon teachers will replace the robots-teacher.”

Users are interested in why it was impossible to simply install the camera in the classroom. This is exactly what they did first, the director recalls. But the camera cannot "go to the board", chat with a teacher and classmates, ask a friend something from a friend. And most importantly - the camera is not interesting to other children, and the children will quickly forget about the student on the other side.

We do not plan to switch to robot training

“I compare this with mine clearance,” says the school principal. - If you can use a robot when cleansing to protect a person, why not? It is clear that these are fears - robots instead of students. This will never happen. Just the situation is desperate. The robot is an assistant, and no one will replace live communication. In any case, we do not plan to switch to robot training.