Robot helps boy waiting for lung transplant stay in the classroom

Walking into the biology classroom at Tyngsborough High School in Boston, Massachusetts, you’ll be greeted with the unlikely sight of a freshman girl whose lab partner is a robot.

Upon closer inspection, however, you can see that it isn’t just a robot she’s working with: That robot is helping 14-year-old cancer survivor Connor Flanagan attend class when his medical condition prevents him from doing so.

Flanagan is now waiting for a lung transplant, WCVB Boston reports, and is currently on oxygen. He gets winded after a short time, and doesn’t have the stamina for a full week of school.

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So the Tyngsborough school district purchased a VGo robot, a teleconferencing device that allows for students and others attend events remotely with a machine that they can move remotely and use to participate in conversations. The New Hampshire company that creates these devices say they are usable in a variety of healthcare, education and business situations.

“The school system was willing to send a tutor, which academically would be fine, but he’d be missing that whole piece of seeing his classmates and interacting with them,” Jennifer Flanagan, Connor’s mother, told WCVB.

Hiring a tutor would have cost the district about $200-$300 a day, while the robot cost $6,000 outright, and can be used in the future for students in a similar situation.

There are currently about 50 of these machines in operation across the United States.