Our research group decided to conclude this year with a very special celebration by arranging a major event starring Temi as a “house manager” in Ülemiste city Öpik office building.

Spanning the entire day, the experiment aimed to evaluate TEMI’s capabilities as a host. The robot would greet the visitors, process their inquiries and lead the way to the selected location keeping track of the visitor’s movement to ensure the human keeps the pace. In addition to that Temi could initiate a call with the company representative to provide further guidance if required.

As the experiment concluded, participants shared their feedback, reflecting on the comfort and reliability they experienced in their interactions with the robot, and also their perceptions of TEMI as a communication partner.

As opposed to the previous experiments we conducted, this one unfolded in a public space and blended with an everyday life of an office building. Unlike past scenarios confined to simulated environments, this one provided a more authentic setting for assessing TEMI’s practicality.

In parallel to the experiment the Öpik conference center hosted a visionary seminar titled “Communicating Service Robots: Boon or Bane?” The seminar became a forum for exchanging ideas about the evolving role of service robots in contemporary society. Janika Leoste, the head of the Creativity Matters research group at TalTech IT College, and Prof. Thomas Hollstein from Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences shared their insights and experiences with service robots, contributing to a rich discourse on the subject.

This week Aleksei Talisainen from our research group visited Frankfurt School of Applied Science to meet our colleagues, who use Temi robots to counduct research on a topic that is becoming increasingly important - elderly care. It appears that semi-autonomous assistant robots can take on a significant part of the workload that is currently carried by the protein-based operators (that’s us).

When extended with a appropriate infrastructure such robots can serve as companions, monitor health conditions and movements in the apartment, keep track of activities, and contact the operator if some abnormalities are detected.

As our reseach group has huge plans regarding personal assistant robots, we are looking forward to our future cooperatsion. Besides,several generations of reseachers participated in the meeting, so the worries that rapidly getting older in average European population will be left without proper care have, in fact, no basis.

Continue reading →

What happens once a year, brings together a lot of great people and creates a holiday atmosphere? Is it Christmas? Birthday? No, it’s the Researchers’ Night!

Continue reading →

This year International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence and Embedded Systems had the privilege to host our colleagues Kalle Tammemäe and Fuad Budagov as participants and speakers.

Continue reading →

26^th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning and 52^nd IGIP International Conference on Engineering Pedagogy (ICL2023) took place in Madrid on 26-29 September 2023. Jaanus Pöial made a presentation „Using telepresence robots for ICT consultancy“, the first author of which was Janika Leoste, and on the cover photo you can see both of them guarding the conference banner.

Continue reading →

The town of Viljandi in not among those you ever heard of, unless you are from Estonia yourself, however Viljandi hospital is one of the biggest in the country as it provides its service to a substantial part of it.

But what sets Viljandi hospital apart is not just its idyllic location; it is an innovative hospital with professional staff that embraces new technology, and we were wondering if telepresence robots could be just the one. Intrigued? So were we.

Continue reading →