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Tero Kaarlela: A common digital twin platform for education, training, and collaboration in robotics

Tampere University
LocationKorkeakoulunkatu 8, Tampere
Hervanta Campus, Festia building, auditorium Pieni sali 1 and remote connection
29.6.2023 9.00–13.00
LanguageEnglish
Entrance feeFree of charge
Ihmishahmo tohtorinhattu päässään, musta siluetti violetin kuultamalla taustalla.
In his doctoral dissertation, Tero Kaarlela developed a common platform for education, training, and collaboration in robotics. In addition, he showed that digital twins enable remote education of practical robotics by enabling the teleoperation of the robots physically located in the robotics laboratory. His primary goal was to develop a platform that makes video streaming, social communication, content sharing, and the teleoperation of robots possible.

Education, training, and collaboration are fundamental cornerstones of modern civilization. Collaboration enables greater intelligence, faster problem-solving, and innovation capabilities than a single individual can achieve. Education and training are closely related; their main difference lies in the goal. Education aims to increase the level of knowledge, while training aims to practice a new skill.

In the past, individuals have travelled to on-site events to collaborate, gain knowledge and practice new skills. Digitalization has evolved to produce a new generation of digital natives who have grown up with digital devices and learn by utilizing web searches, social platforms, internet forums, and virtual environments. Trainers and educators of today are challenged to create natural training, learning, and collaboration environments for the digital native generation.

In his research, Kaarlela presents a prototype of a common digital twin platform for remote education of robotics.

“This platform enables a novel and cybersecure way to utilize digital twins for training, teaching, and collaboration in robotics, utilizing virtual environments suitable for the era of Industry 4.0 and Education 4.0,” Kaarlela says.

Virtual access to the production environment or the educational laboratory enables the utilization of robots without traveling to the site, saving time and environmental resources. Furthermore, virtual environments enable risk-free and productive training in robotics. The resource-sharing feature of the platform enables an effective sharing of the connected robots, resulting in a higher equipment utilization rate.

“In the future, alternative methods for on-site training in robotics are required to adapt to the evolving world. Environmental awareness and digitalization have shaped the learning methods toward location and time-independent preference. The presented platform enables online training in robotics and can be expanded to cover other topics in the future,” he adds.

Public defence on 29 June

The doctoral dissertation of MSc Tero Kaarlela in the field of mechanical and production engineering, titled A Common Digital Twin Platform for Education, Training, and Collaboration, will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Engineering and natural sciences at Tampere University at 12 o’clock on Thursday 29th June 2023 in the auditorium Pieni Sali 1 of the Festia building (Korkeakoulunkatu 8, Tampere). The Opponents will be Professor Luis Ribeiro, Linköping University, and Professor Kristo Karjust, Tallinn University of Technology. The Custos will be Professor Minna Lanz from Tampere University.

The doctoral dissertation is available online.

The public defence can be followed via remote connection.