“It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie but according to New Scientist, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created a robot teacher that can regain the attention of even the most daydream-prone student.

The researchers hooked a test group of students up to sensors that monitor the brain’s learning and concentration area and had them listen to a story being read by a humanoid robot teacher. When the sensors indicated that the student’s was beginning to lapse, the robot did what savvy human educators do to regain it—changed the tone of it’s voice and used communicative gestures.

Since their minds weren’t allowed to wander, the researchers found that students who worked with the teacher robot were better able to recall the details of the story than the groups of students who were read a story without any robot cueing or with inconsistent cueing.”

Head on over to Good Magazine to read more about this study.