… one of them in the robot. The students didn’t seem to mind. Kristjan’s SPEAIT seminar went nicely (despite Kaido the robotic intruder). It is much easier to bomb people with questions from concealment…
Two profs in one seminar
Guest in a lecture
For years, Kaido has used a practice (suggested by Linnar Viik) at his lectures – somewhere at the midpoint, he does an advertisement break, spending some minutes on something totally different from the main topic of the lecture.
Today, Janika visited in a Double robot. Took a pic, too.
International visitors – via telepresence
Today, we had visitors at CM – all of them used our new robotic surrogate bodies. First, we had Dr Piedad Tolmos Rodríguez-Piñero from King Juan Carlos University (Madrid, Spain), later we also hosted Dr Chris Brownell and Prof Päivi Häkkinen from the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (Jyväskylä, Finland).
After discussing our prospective cooperation in telepresence robotics and didactics, we also took our quests to a small campus tour – some of us in our natural state, others using the robots.
Lean management
Q: How to fit eight people into a small meeting room?
A: Invite half of them as robots. They are much LEANER than the real things.
Two new recruits
… to our mighty robot troops (arrived yesterday, started service today) – two Ohmni telepresence robots (as rookies, they got irreverently named “Ohmu 1” and “Ohmu 2”, Estonian for “simpleton”).
The ReSTELA project starting
Today we took part of the Zoom kick-off meeting of the ReSTELA (Remote STEM Labs) ERASMUS+ project which aims to develop a new ecosystem for (especially rural) teachers for teaching robotics. The three-year project brings together ECECT (lead partner, Cyprus), Scuola di Robotica (Italy) and Tallinn University of Technology.
Janika and Kaido introduced our university and lab as well as discussed several matters regarding the project with other partners.
Sunglasses are cool
… even on robots.
Had some problems seeing the conversation partners who sat with bright daylight behind them. The glasses did help.
Now we plan to experiment with more dedicated polaroid overlays on the robot cameras.
Creativity mattered – at the PYNT community follow-up meeting
About 20 people from the PYNT community established last Spring gathered at the TalTech IT College today. In addition to academic staff, we also had a number of medics from Ida-Tallinna Keskhaigla, a major hospital in Tallinn.
Our team ran a series of experiments involving four Double 3 telepresence robots – we had prepared a short imaginary scenario involving a professor and a student discussing homework. Each participant had to go through this both using the Double and his/her ordinary self, and with both a previously known and an unknown partner.
An even more fun part was the ‘robot theatre’ where the participants teamed up and had about half an hour to prepare a short sketch involving both a Double user and ‘live’ participants. Among those, we witnessed (a wacky kind of) giving birth, a bunch of seniors nagging on an advisor, and a funky family (with Mum being away and giving orders via robot)… It was proven that medics need a strong sense of humour. 🙂
The next PYNT community meeting was set to December. Stay tuned!
RiE 2022 paper published
Our review paper from the Robotics in Education 2022 conference, Telepresence Robots in Higher Education – The Current State of Research, has been successfully published.
PYNT community kick-off meeting
We hosted the PYNT (Present Yet Not There) community kick-off meeting on June 16. PYNT is an emerging community of practice involving researchers and educators interested in various applications of telepresence robotics in education (e.g. allowing greater participation for students who cannot attend due to health or other issues).
