The overall goal that the project wanted to achieve was to improve the knowledge of high school students and their teachers in the area of marine robotics and AI applied to environmental monitoring by giving special attention to remote access to infrastructures capabilities. MASK wished to achieve a wider awareness on environmental issues that can be tackled by marine robots; a higher number of students attracted to STEM; an increased use of remote learning technologies; more similar cooperation and exchange initiatives. This was reflected in 5 objectives: 1 encourage interest in both students and teachers towards robotics, artificial intelligence, and STEM in general, by stimulating students to work in STEM-related projects; 2 engage and keep students motivated, with the goals of a) contributing to a decrease in dropout rates and b) encourage a STEM career for every student; 3 increase the digital competences and skills of both students and teachers, with an emphasis on applications in robotics and AI; 4 exploit the possibilities introduced by remote access to provide high quality lectures and perform remote robotic trials; 5 raise awareness about climate change and environmental protection and mitigation, using marine robotics.
MASK project application was done because of the COVID-19 pandemic related impact on education and environment. While the pandemic created many negative impacts on school education including lack of hands-on classes, it also created opportunities MASK wished to explore, e.g. a shift towards e-learning. Similarly, digital skills of students were affected and disparities aggravated during the pandemic. On the other hand, COVID-19 had positive impacts in the environment with a reduction in pollution but it also had less visible negative impacts, e.g. increased medical garbage (surgical masks, COVID tests, etc). Finally, universities with e-learning capabilities can transfer the recent advances in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics fields to high school students. MASK project addressed the need of providing high-quality theoretical and practical classes even in pandemic contexts with mobility restrictions. In addition, it answer the need to fight the digital divide and to exploit the remote possibilities to allow any student anywhere in the planet to perform robotics experiments and learn AI which is an urgent need for the future workforce. Finally, MASK addressed the need for better awareness of the COVID-19 environmental