The education board in Hiroshima Prefecture has pioneered the use of a pint-sized "surrogate robot" to realize what was previously considered impossible: allowing hospitalized students to take classes remotely without being monitored by teachers.
The success of the board's tech-savvy initiative, considered an educational first in Japan, has prompted the education ministry to relax rigid requirements that have long prevented many hospitalized high school students from qualifying for class attendance.
Under the board's initiative, jointly developed with Hiroshima University Hospital, a 23-centimeter-tall robot called Orihime is placed in a classroom to act as an avatar for an ill student in the hospital. The Orihime robot simultaneously records and broadcasts the content of each class for hospitalized students to watch on their tablets, enabling them to take part in classes in real time.