After a successful year teaching languages, these robots in Finland are being taken to the next level, using artificial intelligence to read children's emotions.

But it's a steep learning curve.

Several models of robot Elias have spent the last 12 months at a school in the southern Finnish city of Tampere.

Elias already understands 23 languages, but its creators say mastering the language of emotion will improve learning.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) FOUNDER AND CEO OF UTELIAS TECHNOLOGY, JOHANNA HEMMINKI, SAYING: "Elias could provide different kind of exercises depending on how the student is feeling.

Because emotions have a really strong influence on learning, when our kids are happy in the classroom they learn faster." It works by using in-built cameras with an integrated face recognition engine and pre-trained models to recognise some basic facial expressions.

They won't be replacing their human counterparts just yet.

But teachers at the school saw particular benefits during the trial for less confident children, who didn't seem as worried about making mistakes in front of the robot.

The creators are now exploring how other data can help Elias identify different emotions; like head movements, gaze patterns, tone of voice and touches on its sensors.