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.

So, what would you do if you didn’t sleep well and forgot to smile for the photo? All it takes is a little touch of Photoshop magic that people will barely notice.

Aleksei Talisainen participated in Future of Information and Communication conference in Berlin with a presentation on using telepresence robots in our EuroTeQ course.

The presentation was based on the article “Understanding the Potential of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education Learning: A Case Study” published in 2023 and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded from here

Our research group has established new contacts with Pihlakodu care home chain as well as Tallinn Children’s Hospital. Both institutions are very interested in implementing robot assistants in their daily activities. For example, Pihlakodu is interested in robot assistants helping both to entertain and guide their clients in their daily activities, as well as using telepresence robots for remote access to medical services. Tallinn Children’s Hospital is looking forward to employ a house guide to their ambulatory offices – a friendly robot guide helping children and their parents to find the right rooms as well as to help to reduce stress and create a child-friendly service environment. Together with our research group we are looking for closer collaboration as well as funding opportunities to make these plans a reality.

The Association of Women with Disabilities of Tallinn and Harju County held their yearly meeting at IT College and invited Janika to talk about telepresence robots. She connected remotely from Dusseldorf, Germany, appearing first in an Ohmni, then a Temi. Janika covered both the potential benefits of TPR for people with disabilities (if you cannot get somewhere physically, send a robot) as well as shortcomings (in fact, the problems faced by telepresence users in robots are surprisingly similar to the ones faced by people with disabilities!).

The talk was very well received by the audience and sparked a lively discussion.

Can you imagine your office or a lab located in a 16-th century palace? The employees of Scuola di Robotica do not have to imagine that, because it is exactly the place their school is located, right in the medieval centre of Genova.

ReSTELA (Remote STEM Labs) projects aimed to provide technical means of teaching robotics in places with no robotic labs is reaching its end and we make final preparations and promotion materials on how our telepresence robots help achieve the project goals. So, it is our pleasure to announce that

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If last year the semi-autonomous robot assistant TEMI showcased its skills in the Ülemiste City Öpik office building, pioneering the “house manager” role, TEMI commenced the year 2024 in a significantly larger and more crowded environment. On January 25th and 26th, sTARTUp Day took place, with TEMI navigating among 4,000 visitors and inviting them to explore the TalTech presentation area. Visitors followed TEMI with interest and were pleasantly surprised upon their arrival to the destination point, where they could communicate through TEMI with a real person located in Madrid.

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