The interest towards using telepresence robots in a variety of educational contexts is growing, as they have a great potential to enhance the educational experience of remote learners and provide support for teachers. This paper describes a study, examining the perception of Georgian university personnel about the use of telepresence robots in education. This exploratory research aimed to obtain evidence-based information on how the personnel (16 persons) from eight Georgian universities perceived the telepresence robots’ role in enhancing learning and teaching, and what challenges, benefits, opportunities, weaknesses and threats would characterise these robots. The results of the study revealed that the university personnel perceived telepresence robots to have a great potential to enhance educational activities. In addition, the participants indicated the major challenges, benefits, opportunities, weaknesses and threats, regarding integrating telepresence robotics into the teaching and learning in Georgia. Recommendations for future research are also presented.

IntroductionTelepresence robots (TPRs) are the subject of an emerging field of application and research that has recently received attention from various disciplines. Most of the relevant research has been done in computer science, while the interest from psychology and education has been relatively modest. Proximity plays an important role in personal interactions. Although human spatial behavior has been widely studied in social psychology, little attention has been paid to the spatial behavior of humans and TPRs.MethodsThe purpose of this paper is to present the results of a pilot study that investigated a certain aspect of spatial behavior – physical proximity or interpersonal distance – based on four social zones of interpersonal distance that characterize Western culture: intimate, personal, social, and public. The study conducted an experiment involving participants both in person and via TPRs, using the Double 3 TPRs in various simulated situations.ResultsAccording to the findings, when interacting with a TPR, most participants maintained a communication distance of 60 to 160 cm, which is the borderline between personal and social distance, quite similar to normal human-to-human social communication. Status and previous relationship did not play any role in the choice of communication distance, but there were significant gender differences. On average, male participants chose a shorter distance to interact with TPRs compared to female participants. Persons with previous computer gaming experience chose a significantly shorter communication distance compared to persons with no such experience. A little more than half of the participants found the method of communication through TPRs to be pleasant.DiscussionTPR mediated persons might be perceived as “real” when communicating with physically present persons, with similar norms applied as in human-to-human social interactions. Especially in the context of classroom communication, people keep communication distances comparable to far personal or close social distances. These findings suggest that implementation of TPRs in education does not put additional requirements for physical space in classroom.

Purpose Telepresence robots (TPRs) are an emerging field of application and research that have received attention from various disciplines, including computer science, telehealth and education. The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of publications on TPR in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2022 to gain a better understanding of the state of research on TPRs and explore the role of pedagogical and psychological aspects in this research. Design/methodology/approach The analysis of research publications on TPRs was made on the basis of papers published in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2022. The following research questions were proposed: What are the main tendencies in publication years, document types, countries of origin, source titles, publication authors, affiliations of authors and the most cited articles related to TPRs? What are the main topics discussed in the publications from the perspective of psychology? What are the main topics discussed in the publications from the perspective of educational sciences? Findings The results indicate that it is in the computer science where most of the existing research has been conducted, whereas the interest in the psychology and educational science has been relatively low. The greatest regional contributor has been the USA, whereas the effort in the European Union lags behind. Research publications in psychology in the Web of Science database related to TPRs can be grouped into three broad thematic categories: features of TPRs, degree of social presence compared to physical presence or other mediated technologies and opportunities for using TPRs. The results suggest that from the perspective of psychology, TPRs are one of the approaches that could enable greater social presence in remote communication. Most of the analysed papers in educational sciences investigated the opportunities of using TPRs in various educational fields. However, while the findings of the studies indicated significant potential of TPRs for education, their acceptance for wider use is still challenged. Research limitations/implications The limitations of this research are that this study only analysed research papers in the Web of Science database and therefore only covers a limited number of scientific papers published in the field of psychology and educational sciences on TPRs. In addition, only publications with the term “telepresence robots” in the topic area of the Web of Science database were analysed. Therefore, several relevant studies are not discussed in this paper that are not reflected in the Web of Science database or were related to other keywords. Originality/value The field of TPRs has not been explored using a bibliographic analysis of publications in the Web of Science database from the perspective of psychology and educational sciences. The findings of this paper will help researchers and academic staff better understand the state of research on TPRs and the pedagogical and psychological aspects addressed in this research.

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