A remote telepresence system for high school classrooms

PEBBLES (providing education by bringing learning environments to students) is a telecommunications system which combines traditional videoconferencing with simple robotics. It allows elementary school aged children who are unable to attend school because of hospitalization or other reasons to establish a presence in their classroom with a remotely controlled videoconferencing robot. In addition to communicating with live video and audio, the child can turn the robot's head left and right, tilt the conferencing camera up and down, zoom in and out, and activate a hand for asking questions. Earlier studies have shown that PEBBLES can be successfully integrated into classrooms at the elementary level. However, no studies have been conducted with high school students because attending high school classes requires a high degree of mobility and additional functionality that is lacking in PEBBLES. We present our recently completed high school prototype of PEBBLES. Functionality for this system incorporates all of the controls of the existing version of PEBBLES as well as two displays, and collaboration tools. Other features include being lightweight for portability between classes, and esthetically pleasing to high school students.