Saudi Arabia has a new robotic citizen. Meet Little Sophia, a tiny humanoid robot created to teach children how to code.
The 14-inch robot is the newest member of the Hanson Robotics robot family, the same company that released Little Sophia’s big sister Sophia a few years ago in 2016. Sophia was a robot fashioned to look like Audrey Hepburn who can use artificial intelligence, visual data processing, and facial recognition.
Her little sister, Little Sophia, is aimed at older kids to younger preteens from the ages of 7 to 13. Like a real child, Little Sophia is capable of walking, talking, singing, and playing games. She can also react, having her own facial expressions programmed into her.
Her main purpose is to make learning fun, even for kids with short attention spans. She can teach STEM (Science, Technology, and Mathematics), coding, and Artifical Intelligence in a fun way, hopefully to inspire children to take up these courses one day. In relation to this, the little robot can access open tutorials from Hanson’s AI Academy and has an “open” software platform in her, which means she can be programmed uniquely.
