UK-India tech tie-up creates a hand-washing robot for schools

A collaboration between researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University in India has resulted in a new robot which encourages children to wash their hands. A robot named Pepe has become a new companion for pupils at a primary school in the southern state of Kerala as part of a fresh approach to hygiene devised as a result of a unique India-UK tie-up. “We were delighted by the success of Pepe's visit to this primary school. None of the children had ever interacted with anything like a robot before, but they were excited to interact with this relatively simple machine, which clearly had a positive effect on their efforts to keep their hands clean,” said Dr Amol Deshmukh, from the University of Glasgow's School of Computing Science, who led the project in partnership with colleagues from Amrita University. Pepe was mounted to the wall above a handwashing station at the Wayanad Government Primary School, which has around 100 pupils aged between five and 10. A small video screen placed behind Pepe's green plastic exterior acted as a “mouth”, allowing researchers to tele-operate the robot to speak to the pupils and draw their attention to a poster outlining the steps of effective handwashing. A set of moving 'eyes' helped bolster the illusion that Pepe was paying attention to the children's actions. The researchers found that the robot helped pupils to wash their hands more effectively and more consistently, boosting their rates of handwashing by 40 per cent. Pupils spent on average twice as long washing their hands after Pepe's arrival. After the intervention, more than 95 per cent of the students could correctly determine when handwashing with soap has to be done - before a meal and after a visit to the toilet. Deshmukh added: “We chose this particular primary school for our research because the pupils are drawn from scheduled castes and tribes, a segment of the Indian population which is most affected by poor sanitation and hygiene. We believe this is the first social robotics study to try to improve the lives of children like this. “Social robots could potentially create a positive impact in their lives, but they have rarely been tested with people from rural backgrounds in developing countries. This research helps in identifying a valuable and viable use case for social robots in rural populations in developing countries. “In the future the research will focus on developing autonomous technology for the social robot, so it is capable of interacting with children without any input from humans. We're also keen to begin to carry out wide scale deployments in rural schools to measure effectiveness of this type of social robotics.” The outcomes from the research project were presented on Global Handwashing Day, marked on October 15 every year, at the 28TH IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication in New Delhi. Hand-washing is one of the most effective defences against the spread of diarrhoea and respiratory infections, which cause the deaths of around 1,300 young children each day around the world - 320 of which are in India alone, according to figures from WaterAid India and the World Health Organisation. Dr Rao R. Bhavani from Amrita University said: “AMMACHI [Amrita Multi Modal Applications and Computer Human Interaction] Labs have taken multiple initiatives to address common challenges facing low-income rural communities in India and worldwide using technology.” The study also followed up with a questionnaire completed by 45 of the pupils who interacted with Pepe and the findings revealed more than 90 per cent of the students liked the robot and said they would like to see "Pepe" again after school vacation; 67 per cent of the respondents thought the robot was male, while 33% thought it was female mostly attributing to the robot′s voice as the reason; 60 per cent said it was younger than them, feeling Pepe was like a younger brother or sister, while 33 per cent thought it was older, and 7 per cent perceived the robot to be of the same age; and 72 per cent of the students thought Pepe was alive, largely due to its ability to talk The project is the second “social robot” research project conducted by the University of Glasgow and Amrita University. Last year, they introduced a four wheeled robot to help residents of Ayyampathy in southern India carry 20-litre bottles of water from the local well to their homes. Amrita University and its parent NGO, led by world humanitarian Amma, carry out community development activities in over 142 villages all over India. Researchers from its robotics and women empowerment research centre, called AMMACHI Labs, spend a significant amount of time with rural and tribal communities in India in order to understand their issues and nuances that are not often considered in technology design for such communities.