As students, you pass your schoolwork through different hands from your group leaders to the class representatives(课代表) and finally to the teachers. It might not sound too difficult, but sometimes it can go wrong and take a lot of time.
To deal with this problem, Zhang Xirui from Shenzhen Middle School in Guangdong came up with a useful tool, a smart homework collection robot. He won the first prize in the 20th Guangdong Provincial Children's Invention Awards.
The robot is the second-generation(第二代) model made by Zhang. It uses radio frequency identification (RFID, 射频识别) technology, a reader and a special tag that can share information without touching each other. Each student's notebook has a special RFID tag with their name and the subject. Students only need to place their notebooks on the robot and the machine "sees" the notebook, reads its tag and takes it out of the name list. "Teachers can check who hasn't handed in homework by connecting their phones with the robot through Wi-Fi," the 13-year-old explained to Shenzhen Satellite TV.
Now, he's planning to develop a third-generation and hopes to use ultra-high-frequency(超高频) radio technology to read lots of RFID tags from far away. That means if you stick a special tag on your notebook, the robot can read the information from a lot of notebooks at once. Zhang believes this is the key to how AI can make life easier for us.
Zhang dreams of becoming a scientist when he grows up. "I'm trying making model airplanes and other scientific and creative projects. Inventing has brought me happiness," he said.
