Please stand in front of Walklake for your examination. This health checking robot takes just 3 seconds to diagnose a variety of ailments in children, including conjunctivitis, and hand, foot and mouth disease. Over 2000 preschools in China, with children aged between 2 and 6, are using Walklake every morning to check the health status of their students.
Walklake has a boxy body and smiling cartoony face. Before children enter the classrooms, they stand in front of the robot for a quick checkup by showing it their eyes, throats and hands.
The robot has an infrared thermometer on its forehead, as well as cameras on its eyes, mouth and chest. Its system is trained to scan for disease symptoms, such as fever, hand blisters, throat sores and red eyes.
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If it detects something abnormal, the robot will alert teachers or school nurses who then manually check the child again and decide if they should be sent home.
Since 2016 the Chinese government has recommended all preschools should conduct a morning heath examination on students to reduce the transmission of disease. However, normally this is done by a person. Robots can help streamline the process.
After scanning all students, Walklake aggregates the health data and sends the principal an illness report of the entire school.
“It’s allowing for better health monitoring, especially in places that have large populations but not enough skilled health professionals,” says Karen Panetta at Tufts University in Massachusetts. She suggests if the robot becomes more prevalent, health officials can use its data to pinpoint the spread of diseases, and thus implement proactive interventions.
Emotionless robots
Amanda Sharkey at the University of Sheffield is concerned about the emotionlessness of the robots. “Getting checked by a robot every morning as you enter school sounds like quite an alienating start to the day for young children — a friendly interaction with the teacher or nurse would surely be better,” she says.
Robot doctors for children are on the rise in China with several other companies, such as based in Jiangsu, making similar machines. Some of them have additional functions like measuring height and weight, and reminding teachers of students’ prescriptions.
“The robots can be very appealing to kids and may make them willing to have their health checked every day,” says Joanna Bryson at the University of Bath. But she warns that for all data transmitted and stored on the internet, there is a risk of it being hacked or used for purposes that people are unaware of.
Robot doctors are not the only type of artificial intelligence that’s entering China’s preschools.
A robot that resembles a Lego figurine called Wukong is being used to teach kids how to dance and sing. , a spherical robot, tells stories to children before their afternoon nap.
Another android named Bingo, is teaching children English and science in nearly 3000 Chinese preschools. Its cameras pick up children’s facial expression and body posture during lectures to evaluate students’ attentiveness, participation and emotion.
However, Sharkey says there is not yet good evidence that robots improve education. “Their use in the classroom should be limited,” says Sharkey. “They should never be used to replace human teachers.”
