In the spring I taught two lecture subjects. I spent a great deal of time recording videos to upload every week.
　It was my first time teaching online, so I had some hesitation, but insofar as I had to create the videos, I wanted to make my classes enjoyable. With that in mind, I asked students for their feedback on my lecture videos.
　It just so happens that one of my students wants to be a YouTuber, and he gave me a lot of advice. For example, he told me that students would never watch a 90-minute video, so I prepared several shorter videos and added sound effects.
　The students told me the videos were easy to understand, so I was glad I worked hard on them.

It feels like there are a lot of students who are taking a positive approach and thinking about what exactly they can achieve amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The signature course in the Department of Robotics is Robot Creation Lab, where students actually get to build robots.
　The theme for this course differs every year, so for 2020, I set the theme as overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic with robotics. Based on this, my students identified the difficulties that people are facing because of the pandemic, and they issued a wide range of proposals aimed at resolving those problems with robotics.
　For example, bottles of disinfectant spray are everywhere now, but they are mostly kept on high stands out of the reach of children. This led one of my students to come up with the idea of a robot that can raise and lower a stand to match the height of the user.
　In my final class, I plan to have each group present their findings in a five-minute video. I am excited to see what kind of videos they come up with. Recently, I am seeing more people use videos for presentations at academic society meetings and international conferences.
　With this in mind, I think giving students the experience of using technology and their own ideas to create appealing videos will be helpful for them in the future.

One of the biggest changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic is that people now avoid contact with each other.
　This is why robots are gaining attention as surrogates for humans. From delivery to medical care to nursing care, movements were afoot to replace human work with robots in various situations, but there was little recognition of the need for robots.
　Many people were resistant to robots because they valued human warmth, but the situation has changed completely due to COVID-19. Now the most important thing is not to infect people or involve people if it is not necessary, so some people are starting to think that it might be better to use robots.
　In this way, as people are getting closer to robots, efforts are being made to bring robots closer to people.
　One example of this are the inflatable robots that we are researching here at Ritsumeikan. When you hear the word robot, you typically think of something made out of hard metal, but these inflatable robots consist mostly of soft air pillows.
　When combined with a technology that can reproduce human body temperature, we will be able to create robots that are even closer to humans.

Due to the pandemic, the world is in chaos, so the top priority in terms of both research and daily life, is to alleviate your most immediate worries.
　It is important to focus on the present while thinking about the future after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. They say the pandemic will lead to a new normal, but this has not happened yet. It will take shape going forward.
　The world of the future will be completely different, so what shape do we want it to take? I think we need a clear vision, and we need to focus on research that will help us shape our world.