Helping ill kids attend school

Robots are interacting with patients in medical facilities, handling material in warehouses, working in manufacturing, and helping ill children attend school--all with a hand from the Cloud. Indeed, by linking to the Cloud, robots are bringing homebound students into classrooms, hallways and cafeterias to socialize with their friends and continue learning--in school. "When you allow the student to actually be there, move around, go to classes and go to recess, you return a sense of control," said Daniel Theobald, chief innovation officer and co-founder of Vecna, a Massachusetts-based company that has created the VGo Robotic Telepresence. The VGo robot is essentially a virtual student who is present in the classroom and interacts in all the usual ways, even able to raise a hand (so to speak) to respond to questions in real time. But its creators hope you won't think of it as just a fancy Skype or FaceTime.