ReSTELA is an acronym for Remote STEM Labs and a joint project between TalTech IT College (that’s us), European Centre for Emerging Competencies and Technologies and Scuola di Robotica.

What we plan to do: we create robotics labs, where students can parcitipate remotely. Current plan includes a compact computer that can ba accessed using some remote connection protocol (VNC, RDP etc.) connected to a programmable microcontrolled with sensors and actuators. In addition to remotely programming the controller student will have a feedback of his/her actions using a camera installed over the working surface.

Obviously, the initial setup should be done by an assistant, apart from that we expect the students to work with programmable controllers independently and remotely.

Things we love about the project: the outputs of our combined efforts will be freely available for all parties interested, including full description of the platform and materials as well as detailed description of the labs we create.

This Thursday, we had a pleasant opportunity to host a meeting with a number of visitors from different countries, including Piedad Tolmos Rodríguez-Piñero from King Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain; Sirpa Laitinen-Vaananen from Jamk University of Applied Sciences, Finland;Branko Andij from Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria, and Simon Molnár from Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary. Most of our staff were also there, resulting in a lively discussion and some ideas for future cooperation.

iduEDU is an educational festival in Tallinn Seconday School of Science, where our group took part this year.

The workshop titled “What if the teacher comes to the class as a robot?” brought in about a dozen people and resulted in a lively discussion. Janika Leoste, who was physically in Norway, telepresented herself via a Double 3 robot. Due to shortage of robots Jaanus and Kaido were present in person, however the perceived difference was pretty marginal 🙂