Robotic saint helps people to pray
SanTO helps people with praying and answers their religious questions. Photo Gabriele Trovato
Southern Europe
It looks like a saint and can pray with a rosary. Robot SanTO uses artificial intelligence to support people in their faith.
To wake SanTO up, people have to touch his hand. They can then ask him a question, which he will answer after finding a good response in a database, Kerknet.be writes. When asked about God, SanTO searches the Scriptures to find a relevant passage. In addition, he can recite the rosary prayer and others with the person questioning him.
According to the website of SanTO's designer Gabriele Trovato, SanTO is the first Catholic robot. Its main goal is to accompany elderly people in praying. The robot is still developing. It has passed a practical exam in a hospice in Germany. There, it prayed with the patients in Germany.
Designs
Trovato is a 42-year-old computer engineer from Toscane who moved to Japan. He says that he started the project five years ago.
When studying different robot designs, he started wondering how the concept could be adapted to Christianity. "That led me to design a robot to the image and likeness of a saint", he says. "I wanted to build a robot that could interact. I kept in mind that I would be able to make many believers happy, who are often forced to stay at home."
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