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

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