In June 2024 Fuad Budagov attended Salamanca Tech Summit to present his latest article titled “A Systematic Literature Review on the Applicability of Robot Assistants in Higher Education” that he co-authored with Janika Leoste, Mohammad Tariq Meeran, and Tarmo Robal on a Conference on Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (MIS4TEL)

This summit took place at the Palacio de Congresos de Salamanca in June 26-28 and transformed Salamanca into a hub of technological innovation, featuring experts from top companies. As Fuad put it later on, “it was inspiring to be among leading minds discussing the latest advancements in educational technology, artificial intelligence, and more. The discussions and feedback we received were invaluable, providing new insights and perspectives on our research. Additionally, networking with peers and industry leaders has opened up potential collaborations for future projects. Overall, it was a rewarding experience that highlighted the important role of technology in enhancing education”.

Our research group recently had the pleasure of participating in the 10th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’24) held at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) in Spain. This event brought together academics, researchers, and educators from around the globe to share ideas, experiences, and best practices in teaching methodologies and educational systems.

Our paper, “The Potential of Using Social Service Robots in the Healthcare Environment” which focuses on Health and Medical Education, was presented by Kristel Marmor. Her engaging presentation sparked an active discussion about the future of healthcare with robots. We had insightful exchanges with colleagues, exploring the potential and challenges of integrating social service robots into healthcare settings. The paper is accessible open-access and available here.

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The research focus of our group awakes much interest among graduate students and the number of PhD candidates in our research group grows in both quality and quantity. Kristi Marmor and Fuad Budagov (sorry Fuad, we couldn’t find you for the photo) not only enthusiastically joined our research, but successfully passed their first attestation along with Tiina Kasuk and Aleksei Talisainen – both second-year students. Congratulations to all of you!

Every year TalTech hosts a festival of innovations, where scientists and research groups can present their findings that have already reached at least a prototype stage and can be demonstrated in a working condition.
This year we concentrated our efforts on Temi assistant robot that has more capabilities, comparing to other telepresence robots that we have. This is a more sophisticated model, whose functionality goes beyond creating a communication channel and driving around under user control. Temi has a LIDAR, it can map the environment and operate autonomously or semi-autonomously relieving its operator from the necessity of manual driving.

ReSTELA project is coming to an end and our partners arranged a meeting to discuss the final arrangements of this undertaking aimed to provide robotics education to rural areas and places, where no robots labs are available. Remote presence is an important factor in arranging such labs and telepresence robots offer an ideal solution.
Cyprus is a place of ancient churches and power plug connectors, of bright sun and outstanding diving, but even more than that it is a place to find a lot of hospitable people and we are thankful to our partners from ECECT European Center for their warm welcome.

Janika Leoste and Kristel Marmor delivered presentations at the Robots in Education (RIE) 2024 conference held in Koblenz from April 10th to 12th. During her presentation, Janika Leoste discussed the perspectives of primary school students regarding the integration of telepresence robots into educational practices. Meanwhile, Kristel Marmor elucidated the perceptions of university staff members within communication scenarios involving a social service robot functioning as a household manager, guiding them to a recommendation chamber. Furthermore, Janika Leoste moderated the session titled “Robots and Children” during the conference proceedings.