Chinese Girl Buys “Handwriting Robot” To Complete Her Homework

Last week, the story of how a young student in China bought a “handwriting robot” to finish her homework for the Lunar New Year holiday made news headlines and started a heated debate.

A Harbin junior high-school student is reported to have bought a copying robot with a price of 800 yuan (around $118). What this robot did was completing her transcribing essays and assignments in a short time. Zhang, the girl’s mother became suspicious after her daughter handed in her homework which was neatly written and contained no errors despite a lack of time because of Lunar New Year festivities.

Then, when she was tidying up the girl’s room, she found the copying robot, along with its’ packaging, claiming that it’s able to imitate any handwriting.

After her daughter confessed that she did use the device to finish her homework, Zhang broke it and posted on her social media complaining about the deceitful tactic of the girl, “It can help you with homework, but can it help you on tests?”

The post quickly became viral. In the comment section, some commenters recalled their own experience and wished that the device had existed at that time while others criticized the educational system of China with useless copying assignments.

Requiring students to copy by hand text including vocabulary, poems, and textbook passages a hundred times is pretty common in Chinese schools.

Apparently, these “handwriting robots” are sold on Taobao, a Chinese online platform, with prices from 200 yuan (around $30) to more than 1,000 yuan (around $147). With the more advanced versions, users can input their own handwriting via an app to teach the robot.

The devices can copy and reproduce the handwriting of users so well that it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake one. One teacher posted online that after she spent one week imputing her handwriting through a mobile app, no one had ever been suspicious that it was not her actual handwriting.

A shopkeeper who sells copying robots said that most of his buyers were students. The robots usually made from metal. They have a frame to hold the paper sheets and a mobile arm for a fountain pen or regular pen. Via USB cable, it can be connected to the computer. There is also software which directs the robot what text to write. For one minute, the robots can write about 40 words.