Robots are getting smarter to better help kids.

You’ve probably heard the old tune that robots are going to be taking over the planet soon. A school in Finland has decided to take things one step further in that direction.

After a successful year of teaching languages, Elias robots in Finland are being taken to the next level using artificial intelligence to read children’s emotions. However, the learning curve seems to be quite steep, with Elias robots frequently misnaming the exact emotions of kids.

Several models of the Elias robot have already spent the last 12 months in a school in the southern Finnish city of Tampere. Elias already understands 23 languages. Mastering the language of emotion is supposedly going to have a profound impact on students.

Johanna Hemminki, the founder of Utelias Technologies, says, “Elias could provide different kinds of exercises depending on how the student is feeling. Emotions have a really strong influence on learning. When our kids are happy in the classroom, they learn faster.”

Elias works by using a built-in camera with an integrative face recognition engine. This helps the robots to recognize some basic facial expressions. Teachers at the school found particular benefits in the trial for less confident children who weren’t as worried about making mistakes in front of the robot.

Elias is tracking other data to identify other different emotions like head movements, gaze patterns, tone of voice, and touches on its senses.