"Teacher" Keeko

The new children's teacher - Keeko.

Pupils at a Beijing nursery school have their new "teacher", a small robot with a round head and a touch-screen face.

Standing 60 cm tall, the autonomous teaching assistant Keeko is being used in 600 children's schools in China. It tells stories and gives children logic exercises. This chubby, white, armless robot moves by rolling. Its built-in cameras help it find its way around, while children can use them to record videos.

In China, robots are already delivering groceries, accompanying elderly people or informing them about the law. At the Yiswind nursery school on the outskirts of Beijing, children listen religiously to the little android teacher as he tells, in a child's voice, the story of a prince who got lost in the desert.

"Education today is no longer one-way, with a teacher teaching and students learning," says Candy Xiong, trainer for the use of Keeko in schools. "With its round head and body, the robot is really endearing. When children see it, they practically adopt it immediately," she explains. In addition to Chinese kindergartens, the robot manufacturer Keeko hopes to roll it out in other Asian countries.

Beijing is currently investing massively in the artificial intelligence sector as part of its "Made in China 2025" programme, which aims to develop the high-tech industry.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, China is the country with the highest number of industrial robots in the world: 340,000 are already in use in its factories.

A Chinese company last year unveiled highly realistic robots that can converse, activate a dishwasher, have complex facial expressions and even have sex. Based on artificial intelligence, the Chinese educational robot iPal, which measures like a five- or six-year-old child, follows in the footsteps of Pepper, the tiny android sold since 2015 by Japan's SoftBank Robotics (formerly Aldebaran).

"To teach, you have to be able to interact, to bring a human touch, eye contact, facial expressions. All of that is education," he says. "It's not just a story of language or content.