Elbahrain.net When children are chronically ill and unable to attend school, it’s not just the illness that can be debilitating — the separation from the classroom and friends can also take a toll.

For young people undergoing long-term treatment or struggling with mental health issues, Norwegian company No Isolation developed the AV1 robot, which can take a child’s place in class, serving as their eyes, ears, and voice, and helping them stay connected with their classmates.

The AV1 looks like a blank, simplified version of a human head and torso. It can rotate 360 degrees and is fitted with a camera, microphone and speaker. Teachers place it on a classroom desk and the student controls it remotely using an app, for which they are given a unique password.

“They can tap or swipe their finger around the screen to look at different corners of the classroom,” said Florence Salisbury, marketing director for No Isolation. The student can talk to the teacher or their classmates through the speaker, and the app has a “raise hand” option that makes a light flash on the robot’s head. They can also select emojis that display in the robot’s eyes.

Salisbury says there are 3,000 active AV1 units in 17 countries, mostly in the UK and Germany, both of which have over 1,000 of the robots in operation.

In the UK, schools can rent the AV1 for around £150 ($200) per month, or opt for a one-time purchase for £3,700 (just under $4,960), with an additional service package of £780 (around $1,045) annually.

Salisbury says that perhaps the robot’s biggest benefit is its ability to maintain social bonds. She shared the story of a 15-year-old student in Warwickshire, England, using AV1 whose friends take the robot to lunch with them, keeping him included in their social circle.

“During a long absence, where classmates might not see their friend for an extended period, this connection to school really becomes a lifeline for that student, especially for those with a medical condition,” Salisbury said.

According to the most recent government statistics, more than 19% of students in England were persistently absent from school in the autumn of 2023/24, 7.8% due to illness alone, which is higher than pre-pandemic levels.

During the Covid pandemic, remote learning became the norm, but as students returned to school, for many it’s no longer an option. AV1 was launched before the pandemic, but some schools have reported using the robots to help students who have struggled to reintegrate with the classroom environment.

“They make the child important”
The UK’s Chartwell Cancer Trust has a supply of 25 AV1 robots it provides to children with serious illness. Founding trustee Michael Douglas told CNN that the robots enable children to stay engaged with their education even while in intensive care. “They are loved by the parents and make a real difference,” he said. “They make the child important.”

But he acknowledged that there can be administrative challenges around their use and that “red tape can be a real issue” when trying to get the AV1 system into schools or hospitals.

He added that some schools may also struggle to maintain the necessary technical infrastructure for seamless operation, because of weak Wi-Fi or mobile signal dark spots.

Technical training
In June, research published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Digital Health, examining the use of the AV1 in Germany and of the OriHime avatar robot in Japan, found the technologies “bear high potential for children to stay socially and educationally connected.”

However, it added that there was a need to establish structures to give equal access to avatar technologies, and that training sessions for teachers on the technical and social aspects of the robots are important for successful implementation.

Last August, No Isolation rolled out AV1 Academy, a library of training materials and resources aimed at improving the usability of the robot.

According to Salisbury, the AV1 is designed with robust privacy features. No personal data is collected, and the app prevents screenshots or recordings. Encryption secures the livestream, and only one device can connect at a time, with the robot’s head and eyes lighting up to signal active use.

There are other avatar robots on the market and some, like VGo and Buddy, have wheels and can move around the school or workplace, while some have a screen that shows the user’s face. Salisbury said that not having wheels is more practical for AV1, and weighing around 1 kilogram, the robot is easy for teachers or students to move between classes in a bespoke backpack.

She added that the absence of a screen showing the child’s face can also be an advantage. “Removing that pressure to be on camera, we’ve seen, increases the likelihood of the robot being used for students with emotionally based school avoidance,” Salisbury said.

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Elbahrain.net Israel has pummeled Lebanon with an unprecedented airstrike campaign in less than three weeks, killing over 1,400 people, injuring nearly 7,500 others and displacing more than one million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The bombardment, which Israel says is targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the country, marks the world’s “most intense aerial campaign” outside of Gaza in the last two decades, according to the conflict monitoring group Airwars.

Israel’s strikes are occurring at “a level and intensity that Israel’s own allies just simply would not have carried out in the last 20 years,” Emily Tripp, director of the UK-based group, told CNN. She pointed to the United States-led military campaign against ISIS in 2017, where, at the height of the battle for Raqqa – the terror group’s de facto capital – 500 munitions were deployed in a single day.

Over the course of two days, on September 24 and September 25, the Israel military said it used 2,000 munitions and carried out 3,000 strikes.

In comparison, for most of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, the US carried out less than 3,000 strikes a year, barring the first year of the invasion, where around 6,500 strikes were carried out – according to data from Airwars analyzed by CNN.

“This isn’t normal,” Tripp said of both the scale and size of Israel’s strikes on Lebanon. While Israel’s air campaign is extremely “unusual,” Tripp said its assault on Gaza over the last year – where nearly 60% of buildings are estimated to have been damaged from Israeli strikes – have normalized such mass assaults.

Israel says it takes steps to minimize civilian harm, like making phone calls and sending text messages to residents in buildings designated for attack. Human rights groups like Amnesty International say such warnings do not absolve Israel of responsibilities under international humanitarian law to limit civilian harm.

CNN has previously reported on Israel’s devastating use of 2,000-pound bombs, which experts blame for the high death toll in Gaza and appear to have been deployed in the airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon. The massive munitions have impacted civilian infrastructure in Gaza and now Lebanon.

CNN teams in Beirut this week found that many Israeli strikes happened without prior warning. Israel also sends evacuation orders by text in the middle of the night, when most people are sleeping.

As a result, the death toll in Lebanon continues to rise, with a fifth of its population now displaced.

Hezbollah and Israel have consistently been exchanging fire since October 8, the day after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, has said that it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza – where the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 41,000 people in the past year, according to the ministry of health in the territory – is reached.

The majority of the fire exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of the war has come from Israeli strikes, drones, shelling and missiles on Lebanese territory, according to data from ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data), an organization that collects data on violent conflict.

Israel has launched nearly 9,000 attacks into Lebanon since October 8; Hezbollah launched 1,500 attacks in that same time frame, according to the ACLED data.

On September 25, Israel further escalated its air campaign with an intense barrage of strikes across swathes of Lebanon, marking the deadliest day for Lebanon since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war – and a turning point in the current conflict.

While most of Israel’s airstrikes over the past year have targeted southern Lebanon, Israel has also ramped up its attacks on Lebanon’s capital in recent weeks, with multiple airstrikes in southern Beirut flattening residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas.

A rapid succession of strikes has killed at least seven high-ranking Hezbollah commanders and officials in recent weeks, dealing the most significant blow to the group since its formation in the early 1980s.

Those strikes have mostly been concentrated in the city’s southern Dahiyeh neighborhood, a densely packed residential area and Hezbollah stronghold. It was there that Israel assassinated the militant group’s leader in an air raid on his underground bunker on September 27.

But as Israel’s campaign to disarm Hezbollah continues, civilians are paying the highest price, including 127 children who have been killed in less than three weeks, according to the health ministry.

On September 23 alone, at least 558 people – including 50 children and 94 women – were killed.

Women and girls are also particularly affected by the displacement caused by the airstrikes, according to Lebanon’s country director at the humanitarian agency CARE International. Nearly half of the people in Lebanon’s emergency shelters for displaced people are children, and the facilities are operating beyond capacity, Michael Adams said.