12 | New Scientist | 1 June 2019
PLEASE stand in front of
Walklake for your examination.
This health-checking robot
takes just 3 seconds to diagnose
a variety of ailments in children,
including conjunctivitis and
hand, foot and mouth disease.
More than 2000 preschools
in China, with children aged
between 2 and 6, are using
Walklake every morning to check
the health of their students.
The robot has a boxy body
and smiling, cartoony face.
Before children enter the
classrooms, they stand in front
of it for a quick check-up, showing
their eyes, throats and hands.
It has an infrared thermometer
on its forehead, as well as cameras
on its eyes, mouth and chest.
The system is trained to scan
for the symptoms of various
infections, such as fever, hand
blisters, throat sores and red eyes.
If it detects something
abnormal, the robot will alert
teachers or school nurses who then
manually check the child and
decide if they should be sent home.
Since 2016, the Chinese
government has recommendedthat all preschools should conduct
a morning heath examination
on students to reduce the
transmission of disease.
This has normally been done by
people, but it is hoped that robots
can streamline the process.
After scanning all students,
Walklake aggregates the healthdata and sends the principal an
illness report for the entire school.
“It’s allowing for better
health monitoring, especially
in places that have large
populations but not enough
skilled health professionals,”
says Karen Panetta at Tufts
University, Massachusetts.
She suggests that if the robot
gets used more widely, health
officials can use its data to
pinpoint the spread of diseases,and implement proactive
interventions.
However, Amanda Sharkey at
the University of Sheffield, UK,
is concerned about the lack of
emotion in the process. “Getting
checked by a robot every morning
as you enter school sounds like
quite an alienating start to the
day for young children – a friendly
interaction with the teacher
or nurse would surely be better,”
she says.
Robot doctors for children are
on the rise in China, with several
other companies, such as Kidata,
making similar machines. Some
of them have additional functions
like measuring height and weight,
and reminding teachers of
students’ prescriptions.
“The robots can be very
appealing to kids and may
make them willing to have their
health checked every day,” says
Joanna Bryson at the University
of Bath, UK. However, she warns
that for all data transmitted and
stored on the internet, like this,
there is a risk of it being hacked
or used for purposes that people
are unaware of. ❚A THIN layer of 3.3 billion-year-old
rock contains unexpected treasure:
organic matter that was carried to
Earth by meteorites when the planet
was still young. The find supports
the idea that organic – meaning
carbon-based – chemicals from
space supplied some of the raw
materials for the first life on Earth.
“This is the very first time that
we have found actual evidence for
extraterrestrial carbon in terrestrialrocks,” says Frances Westall of
the CNRS Centre for Molecular
Biophysics in Orléans, France.
We have long known that
carbon-based chemicals can
be found in space. In particular,
molecules like amino acids and
nucleotides that are used by life
have been found in meteorites. As
a result, many people suspect that
meteorites carried these building
blocks of life to the primeval Earth.
Westall and her colleagues
studied a slab of rock from the
Josefsdal Chert in eastern South
Africa, which contained many
layers laid down over time.“There was this one layer with
this outstanding signature,” says
Westall. “It’s very similar to organic
matter in meteorites.” The layer
contained minerals called
spinels that are known to form in
meteorite impacts (Geochimica et
Cosmochimica Acta, doi.org/c56s).
The team thinks the carbon-
based matter was thrown into the
air as a fine dust after the meteorite
hit. The dust then settled and wasburied under volcanic ash. This
preserved the carbon in one discrete
layer: in other circumstances, it
would have mixed with living
matter, rendering it undetectable.
Meteorites hit Earth regularly
from its birth 4.5 billion years ago
until about 3 billion years ago. “The
organic matter from the carbon-rich
meteorites must have been raining
down at quite a high rate,” says
Westall. The carbon could have been
used by the first life. We don’t know
when life formed, but there are
fossil microbes from about 3.4 or
3.5 billion years ago. ❚
Michael MarshallOrganic matter
from space found
inside ancient rockAstrobiology“ This is the first time we
have found actual evidence
for extraterrestrial carbon
in terrestrial rocks”The bot will see you now
Robots are conducting daily health checks at schools in China
TechnologyYvaine YeWALK
LA
KENews
Walklake checks
children to tell
if they are ill