They say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but what happens when Jack plays all the time and does not do any work? That other extreme is not a good idea as well, so how about achieving a fine balance between work and play? For kids who might feel as though they are burdened by homework, the future could be bright with a homework-solving robot. Christopher Yan and Derek He, have managed to cobble together a robot that is capable of solving math homework. The kicker for this particular robot? It is even capable of writing out the answers according to their own handwriting, ensuring that the teacher would not know any better.
This particular project for both, known as Homework Help, picked up the top gong at this year’s PennApps, which happens to be one of the largest student hackathons in the world, where it was held at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania. Just how does Homework Help perform such a “miracle”?
Well, it will rely on a camera that will boast computer vision in order to identify simple math problems, before it moves to solves them, while writing out the answer with a pen in a mechanical manner. It is capable of measuring the distances between characters in order to make sure whether they are part of the same number, while there is some space beneath them which will allow it to figure out just where the answer should be written. Forget about it solving complex math problems at this point in time, as it does only simple addition problems. Perhaps the future might see a more impressive repertoire.
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