Rollie the Robot keeps U of A student connected to classroom

When University of Alberta student Sam Bruns returned to her classes after having surgery, she looked a bit different.

She was shorter, for starters; instead of legs, she was tearing around on two Segway-like wheels. And where her head once sat was now an iPad with a couple of microphones.

In reality, Bruns was at home — head and all — and attending class through Rollie, a robotic stand-in that allowed her to see and hear what was going on in the classroom.

"I basically sat in bed with my laptop, in recovery, and was able to go to class with him," Bruns told CBC's Edmonton AM.

Bruns never planned to be a robotic student. When the education student signed up for the intensive three-week course, she expected to show up in person. However, after the course had already begun, she received a call from her doctor telling her that the surgery — which she had been waiting months for — had been scheduled.

"I got a call … 'Oh, by the way, you're booked for surgery Tuesday before your exam.'"

Bruns could have tried to take the course again or asked to have notes sent to her — but instead she thought back to class she had taken last year that focused on educational technology. The course was held online and taught by a professor in British Columbia. During an event held in the education department, the professor showed up via Rollie the Robot to meet the students.

Bruns wondered if the same technology could be used to allow her to keep up with her classes, so she asked the school's tech department if she could use the machine.

"[I] sweet-talked my way into a robot," she said.

Classmates surprised by robo-replacement

Rollie is a "double-telepresence robot," which means that it is able to send audio and video back to Bruns in real-time, while also broadcasting her own voice and image.

Bruns controlled the robot through a special program on her laptop, which also had a map to show her where Rollie was on campus. The robot was easy to control, "it was like a video game" she said.

The robot has been used a bit for conferences in the past, she said, but this was the first time he had gone to any classes.

Classmates weren't aware that she would be using the robot stand-in, so they were a bit surprised when it wheeled in to class one day. They quickly took to their new classmate, Bruns said: before too long, they had put designs on its wheels and hung a T-shirt over its thin frame.

According to Bruns, using the robot offered some advantages over just watching a video feed of the lecture. Rollie was able to turn to whoever in the room was speaking, and the microphones helped cut down on background noise during lectures.

Rollie attended three of Bruns' classes, around eight hours in total, before she was well enough to go herself. In that time, she said she didn't run into many technical difficulties. However, she did learn that Rollie wasn't quite ready for elevators.

"He cuts out and then you're stuck on the elevator. We learned that the hard way," she said.

Bruns said she hopes her experiment with Rollie will open up the technology to use it in other classrooms.

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