Projects

The goal of the project is to develop and integrate a personal student assistant based on large language models (e.g. GPT) into the learning environment of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech). The assistant will be connected to the university's Moodle learning environment and will be able to provide fast and personalized feedback, helping students with course completion and solving assignments.

Platform work is a growing form of employment in Estonia, impacting social security options, career paths, and traditional forms of employment. It is essential to understand the economic and social outlook of workers engaged in platform work and the future of this sector in Estonia, in relation to developments in the European Union. This interdisciplinary project, which brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and economists, offers insights into the field of platform work and its broader impacts on the Estonian economy through various quantitative and qualitative methods. The central outcome of the work is a scenario-based analysis of the potential future development of platform entrepreneurship in Estonia, including an examination of emerging risks and opportunities-, considering regulatory developments in Europe, macroeconomic trends, and technological advancements. It also considers the impact of different scenarios on society, including the potential increase in vulnerability. The report produced within the framework of the project, and the related activities carried out within the project are based on the need to understand platform work more broadly while also considering its potential impacts on the development of social security in Estonia.

Visible effects of society’s ageing is the reported increase in the necessity of orthopaedic implants boosting to a huge economical market. For a successful integration of any implant, bone regeneration, osseointegration at the interface bone and implant as well as mitigating inflammatory events are crucial aspects. The project aims at extending the biocompatibility and tribo-mechanical performance associated with a lifetime of surgical implants based on Titanium (Ti). The hypothesis states combining Ti alloy with hydroxyapatite (HAp), and medically active components (drug delivery function) in order to obtain excellent biomaterial supporting bone growth and eliminating the problem of loosening of the implant by its integration with bone. The project goes beyond the state-of-the-art by laser surface treatment, opening the underlying porosity improving the cell transport and cell growth. The result implant biomaterial, will reduce the number of removal surgeries in the future.

The DEUCE Project aims at better enforcement of judicial decisions (judgments, authentic instruments, and court settlements) issued in the context of cross-border pecuniary claims. It particularly focuses on the creation of a Roadmap of the 26 EU Member

This project focuses on the development and integration of Extended Reality and existing digital tools to support advanced engineering education in manufacturing. The purpose of the XREN is to bring back the results of research activities in the field of digital manufacturing to the engineering students. Since, process modelling, analysis, virtual and augmented reality, as well as the role of the human workers in the factories have been among the main research topics in manufacturing. Therefore, the project aims to experiment, test and validate learning approaches based on XR technologies, focusing the attention on: • Development of a VR environment to support learning activities in the area of manufacturing, namely in the design and analysis of manufacturing systems. • Development of an AR approach to support learning activities in the area of mechanical design and maintenance process. • Develop approaches and methodologies to analyze and evaluate the learning mechanisms based on these technologies.

The aim of this applied research is to improve the usage of radars for autonomous navigation of unmanned land vehicles in off-road scenarios. As radars use radio waves for their operation, they have several advantages over optical sensors such as cameras and lidars. For example, weather phenomena such as snow, rain, fog, etc. have much less impact on the performance of radars than optical sensors. Also, radars are not disturbed by dirt and other small debris, making them an ideal sensor for off-road navigation. However, radars do have one major drawback: the resolution of the point cloud they generate is significantly lower than that of, for example, lidars. This research will explore ways to improve the quality of data from radars using artificial intelligence and other appropriate algorithms.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing effects on society and the economy, there has been a significant increase in concerns about the possibility that malicious actors could return to using hazardous agents in future plots. These concerns are legitimate in Europe, where there are still technological gaps in several aspects of the CBRN Security Cycle and specifically in the devices for rapid detection, identification and monitoring of low-volatile chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and non-volatile biological warfare agents (BWAs), mainly in complex natural environments. Benchmark technologies, including IMS, GC-IMS, and Py-GC-IMS, can sample and identify the most volatile CWAs within seconds (IMS) or BWAs within minutes (Py-GC-IMS), even at low ppbV concentration levels, but cannot detect extremely low doses of low-volatile toxic fourth generation CWAs (e.g. Novichoks), nor can they differentiate biological fragments from harmless substances. To overcome these gaps, it is necessary to develop new highly selective and sensitive detectors with detection limits in the pptV range, operated at elevated temperatures (> 200 °C) to prevent condensation of low volatile constituents, high 2D resolving power and robust analytical methods. TeChBioT aims for the development of a universal detection technology based on high-temperature (HT) ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) with optional gas chromotographic pre-separation (GC) and pyrolysis (Py) for enabling fast detection and identification of nonvolatile biological and low-volatile chemical agents. The innovative technology is combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) models to reduce the dimensionality of the 2D spectral data and enable distinguishing of bacteria, fungi, viruses, low volatile chemical warfare agents, and toxic industrial compounds at pptV concentration levels based on their unique fingerprint within a complex environment.

Conducting a comparative study on ICT higher education offered by universities, the competencies of emerging ICT professionals, and the needs of the labor market, using Kenya, Nigeria, and Armenia as case studies. The study will be carried out within the framework of the international talent partnership project “Digital Explorer 2.”

The objective of the project is to develop a semi-industrial prototype of a milling and separation technology for the treatment of clothing, textile, and footwear waste, including waste streams containing plastic and metal fittings. The project scales up laboratory-developed technologies to semi-industrial level and establishes infrastructure for continuous process optimisation. The broader aim of the project is to support the principles of the circular economy, increase the value of textile waste, and advance research and development results toward a market-ready technology. The planned activities include engineering design, the development and integration of mechanical components, testing with various types of waste materials (including clothing, leather, plastics, and wool), as well as the evaluation of the technology’s reliability and separation performance. The creation of the prototype will help translate research outputs into practical application and will prepare the groundwork for subsequent technology licensing or product development.

Mycoprotein texturization technologies are being developed to create high-quality alternative meat and fish products. The work includes optimizing the composition and structure of prototypes and evaluating their quality. The technology will be scaled up from laboratory to industrial scale. The result will be an industrially applicable solution for developing mycoprotein-based products.

The objective of the project is to conduct a feasibility study on welding in space in cooperation with the European Space Agency and the company Moliri OÜ. This includes the analysis of target materials and joints, a study of human user requirements and control methods, a literature review and comparative analysis of welding processes suitable for the space environment, and the preparation of a preliminary plan for testing, qualification, and validation of welding in space.

The aim of the project is to develop plasticizers that are safe for human health, primarily from dicarboxylic acids obtained from waste of the oil shale industry. This supports the development of the local chemical industry, reduces dependence on imports, and diversifies raw material sources. Converting diacids into plasticizers broadens their application potential—from plastics and cosmetics to specialty materials—enabling the creation of high value-added products in Estonia.