Visiting Bulgaria via Telepresence-Robot

Trough the EU project ER4STEM Botball is spreading more and more in Europe – for example  towards our project partner in Bulgaria, which for the first time have 2 teams participating in the Botball tournament. We held a Workshop for them using the telepresence robot “VGo” and the internet.

It was an interesting experience, to present a workshop for the first time via teleconference. It was even more interesting to have the possibility to walk around as a guest and to look in any direction via the camera, despite the fact of being far away.

Like usual for a Botball-workshop we addressed various topics – the motivation behind Botball and the general structure of the competition, the different Botball-parts including the new Wallaby-controller, the broad field of programming and the special characteristics of the ECER as a combination of the European Botball-tournament and scientific conference. The students were motivated and managed to keep up with the tight schedule very well.

Towards the end of the workshop the battery of VGo run low and we had to finish the workshop via Skype. One thing I can now confirm for sure: You don’t know the value of water before the well runs dry. Even a camera which enables you to look around what is happening.

Thanks to our project partner for this unique experience. My only suggestion for improvement: Please bring a mirror next time! 😉