The newest teacher's assistant at EIU isn't a graduate student, but a robotic dog named Ben-Ben.

CHARLESTON, Ill. (WAND) - The newest teacher's assistant at EIU isn't a graduate student, but a robotic dog named Ben-Ben. The robot is a way for students to connect what they learn in class to a real-life piece of technology. 

"For example, we had it in the AI class to understand how machines imitate humans or living creatures," said Abidalrahman Moh'd, an associate professor in the mathematics and computer science department at EIU. "Then we look at the image processing and see how does it understand pictures, and how it uses natural language processing to understand language. " 

Ben-Ben can switch between being led by a leash or controlled by a remote. The dog can complete several tricks, including balancing on two legs, dancing and pouncing. 

Students can write code to modify the dog's behavior or add new tricks to its repertoire. The dog is equipped with technology similar to ChatGPT, which allows it to respond to questions in real time. When WAND News asked Ben-Ben about its AI program, it responded, "I use artificial intelligence for some advanced language models like ChatGPT to chat with you. My brain is filled with knowledge, jokes and lots of tricks." 

Students say they feel like they are learning from the future and expect technology like the robot dog to be in many homes and workplaces in the future. 

"The best way to learn it is to actually have experience with it and understand the demonstrations of how it works, said Adam Almuhtaseb, a student majoring in computer information and technology. "Being able to see a dog like this and do the things that it can do, when you see the programming aspect of it, you can kind of connect the dots like, oh, this line of code and this line of code do this, it's so helpful." 

Almuhtaseb thinks that in the future, he will work with similar technology to the dog, including its codes and programs. 

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