RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
This week, some school kids in South Korea had an unusual substitute. The teacher's named Engkey and is a robot. A pilot program has deployed about 30 robots. They teach English as they scoot around reading books and singing songs. The robots are three feet tall and tubby with a TV panel displaying the face of a Western woman. That avatar mimics, in real time, the expressions of human operators in the Philippines.
It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.