Robot is advising New York Times Square about the Corona virus

A friendly facial robot has been roaming the New York Times Square since Monday to help provide information about the new virus.

Curious pedestrians can answer questions about the coronavirus they remember on an iPad's touch screen attached to the robot's chest and even communicate with the machine.

The robot, known as the Promot, has been developed by a group of Russian and Philadelphia-based startups that create autonomous service robots for business purposes.

"We have developed a special software for detecting coronavirus symptoms," Oleg Kivorkutsev, the agency's chief business development officer, told Reuters.

We understand how important this problem is, how nervous people are, how scared people are. But if they can understand a few simple things, for example: what are the symptoms of coronavirus, what should they do to prevent it, then knowing the answers to these questions will benefit everyone.

It asks if a person has common symptoms of such a fever, and that person needs to click the "Yes" or "No" options on the touch screen, after which they will receive a reassuring message if they do not select a number.

Haley, who was visiting New York from London, said, "This thing is very clever. It's really, really cute. "

Others were not so easily fascinated. Thomas McAlinden of Scotland said, "Something mental."