Imagine you are a student, it's not hard. Imagine the stress with trying to take notes whilst following your instructor, you know you've got no chance of even understanding what the instructor just said and the only thing you'll get if you stick up your hand and try to clarify on some apparently foggy details will be a stern look and an invisible 'stupid!' sticker on your forehead.

But all that is set to change;

uMind, perhaps one of the most interesting companies created in the spring following the AI Winter, has created uLearn, a type of system normally known as an 'Intelligent Tutor Interface', a system that can monitor, guide and, above all, adapt to a student whilst taking the role of instructor.

Not just another instructor, but one who is, effectively, at your beck and call. This has magnificent potential far outstripping that of traditional learning methods; not least the prime reason being one-to-one lessons.

A 13-year-old boy wrinkles his brow and steps with baggy pants onto an orange skateboard.

"Don't understand? Let's use your skateboard as an example," says Newton, pointing toward the device invented centuries after his death.

These are not actors but rather a curious modern-day boy interacting with a life-like, computer-generated version of the famous physicist who authored the three laws of motion — among other things.

So far, that kind of conversation is still fiction. But it's the ultimate goal of a new research project that plans to merge gaming technology with artificial intelligence to build an archive of virtual figures that behave and respond as naturally as real people.