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Computing Sciences

QTrobot, welcome to Robostudio

— computing_sciences

It was a stormy dark night. No, actually it was a warm and bright morning of August, and a new robot QTRobot had arrived to Robostudio when we were spending our holidays. Now it was time to unbox QTRobot and meet our new member.

The new direction of Robostudio is to use only data safe robots, as during last year we found out that actually many of the robots deliver personal data, such as voice and image of the users, to locations and stakeholders for which this type of information should not end up to according to GDPR. Over the spring 2022 we arranged a series of co-learning workshops with primary school pupils and university students and we developed some “humanistic data security solutions” for our current not-so-safe robots, for example we were controlling some of them through the glass window in order for the robot not to hear the user’s voice, or we blocked the microphone of the robot manually, as well as the cameras. However, for sure, these solutions prevented a huge part of human-robot interaction, because human-robot interaction, based on speech and image recognition, surely depends on these sensors to be in active use.

QTrobot is a social robot for learning, developed by LuxAI, Luxembourg. Before the purchase of the robot, we inspected the data security policies of this robot and company and found out that this product is fully following the regulations of Europe when it comes to personal data privacy. So, finally, we have received a robot, with which we can be sure about our own data security, as well as the data security of the people who come to interact and learn with robots in Robostudio, including vulnerable people such as school children.

Check from here how the unboxing of QTrobot went:

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The QTrobot was delivered with sufficient gears, including the base platform, two tablets (one for educator and one for learner), and chargers. Our first impression of the QTrobot is that the robot is easy to transport due to its lightweight (5kg) and abundant facial expressions. QTrobot can perform several playful tasks such as greetings, kisses, and peekaboo. The robotic software is programmable by people with or without technical background through basic block programming and advanced Python and C++ API. Moreover, QTrobot is equipped with facial and gesture recognition to provide responses and reactions to the users. We are very excited about our new member in the Robostudio.

Cheers, Aino, Apa and Chia from Robostudio

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