Universities are Seeking AI-Powered Mini PCs to Drive Next-Gen Robotics Teaching
A Romanian university is buying generative AI mini PCs to drive humanoid robots and reshape digital skills teaching, echoing a wider European trend.
A Romanian university is buying generative AI mini PCs to drive humanoid robots and reshape digital skills teaching, echoing a wider European trend.
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A new procurement for generative AI Mini PCs in Bucharest aims to push humanoid robots from demonstration pieces to everyday teaching tools, tying artificial intelligence more closely to how students learn – and how they prepare for future work.
On 25th November 2025, Universitatea din București published the AI Mini PCs for Robotics and Education contract notice. The university plans to acquire “generative AI Mini PCs” to support the automation of humanoid robots and to expand what it describes as its AI ecosystem.
The notice links this hardware directly to teaching outcomes. The stated aims are to improve the quality of education and to prepare students for future job markets. Rather than treating AI as a purely theoretical subject, the university is signalling that it wants students to work with AI-enabled physical systems as part of their studies.
Describing the devices as generative AI Mini PCs suggests they must be capable of running or supporting generative AI applications within the robotics environment. Tying that capability to humanoid robot automation underlines a focus on embodied AI – systems that do not only process data but also interact with the physical world.
The reference to an “AI ecosystem” points beyond a single lab purchase. It implies that these mini PCs are expected to sit within a broader mix of hardware, software and learning activities across the institution, with humanoid robots as one visible component.
Using humanoid robots as an anchor for AI teaching reflects a shift towards learning by doing. By linking generative AI with robot automation, Universitatea din București is positioning robotics not only as a research topic but as a testing ground for skills that employers increasingly expect – from working with autonomous systems to understanding how AI decisions play out in real environments.
Across Europe, other universities are making similar connections between robotics, advanced automation and education. In September 2025, Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně launched the Humanoid Robot for Education procurement to deliver a humanoid robot for teaching at its Faculty of Multimedia Communications, as part of a wider modernisation project. There, as in Bucharest, the robot is explicitly framed as an educational tool rather than a standalone research asset.
Romanian universities have been particularly active in updating automation and robotics facilities. In September 2025, Universitatea Dunărea de Jos din Galați launched the Modernization of Automation Laboratory project to equip an electromechanical automation lab with virtual reality, augmented reality and AI technologies. The goal there is to refresh laboratory environments so that students encounter the same classes of technology they are likely to see in industry.
In October 2025, Universitatea Craiova followed a similar line with an Automotive Mechatronics Educational System procurement focused on automotive technologies. That contract, framed as part of a university project, again links specialised engineering equipment with educational use.
Other institutions are coupling AI with domain-specific teaching. On 5th November 2025, Univerzita veterinárskeho lekárstva a farmácie v Košiciach published the Interactive System Pharmabot notice, seeking computing infrastructure to enhance pharmaceutical education through advanced AI, simulation technologies and interactive learning modules. This shows AI-enabled systems being embedded not only in computer science, but in professional disciplines such as pharmacy.
Seen against this backdrop, Bucharest’s move to pair generative AI Mini PCs with humanoid robots fits a wider pattern: universities are treating AI-powered physical systems as core teaching infrastructure that can support more immersive and practice-oriented learning.
The Bucharest procurement is part of a broader build-out of AI computing capacity in higher education and, increasingly, in schools. While the AI Mini PCs project is focused on compact devices and robotics, many other buyers are investing in heavy-duty infrastructure.
In July 2025, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara issued an Advanced AI Computing Infrastructure notice, seeking a high-performance ecosystem for processing large data volumes and running machine learning applications. The planned set-up spans processing nodes, data storage servers, interconnection switches and management platforms – a full-scale AI backbone rather than individual lab machines.
UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA TIMIȘOARA is pursuing a similar path. Its July 2025 AI Infrastructure Computing Equipment procurement sets out requirements for servers to underpin an integrated AI system and graphics workstations for image processing. Here, AI infrastructure is explicitly tied to a project labelled as a Romanian AI hub.
Elsewhere in Romania, Universitatea Tehnică Gheorghe Asachi din Iași has linked computing and robotics within a large-scale initiative. Its August 2025 Equipment Procurement for HRIA Project seeks high-performance computing equipment, an intelligent robotic system and a brain–computer interface system under the Romanian Artificial Intelligence Hub project, with delivery dependent on programme funding.
The trend is not confined to Romania. In June 2025, Sofiyski universitet "Sv. Kliment Ohridski" in Bulgaria published a Computing Servers for AI Research contract for servers to support research and development in artificial intelligence, including applications such as large language models and robotics. In November 2025, Ίδρυμα Τεχνολογίας & Έρευνας (transliterated as Idryma Technologias & Erevnas) in Greece went to market with a Research Infrastructure Procurement for high-performance servers, management servers, a high-capacity storage system and a low-latency computing network, all geared towards scientific applications and AI.
While these projects focus on centralised computing power, other buyers are targeting end-user devices that bring AI closer to the classroom. In October 2025, Politechnika Lubelska issued a Mobile Computers for AI Laboratory notice to supply 18 mobile computers for an "Artificial Intelligence Laboratory" that underpins a new specialisation in "Artificial Intelligence Engineering" as part of the project "POLLUB with us modern technologies".
At school level, the scale steps up dramatically. On 11th August 2025, Poland’s Ministerstwo Cyfryzacji launched an AI Laboratory Sets Delivery framework to purchase 12,000 AI laboratory sets for primary and post-primary schools across 73 territorial units. That move shows governments seeking to normalise AI literacy much earlier in the education pipeline.
Specialist projects are also emerging around accessibility and critical infrastructure. In August 2025, SOFTTEHNICA SRL advertised a contract for equipment to implement SignAll, an AI-driven platform designed to facilitate sign language communication. In September 2025, GREENSOFT tendered for research equipment to support the Romanian Artificial Intelligence Hub’s Akolladex platform, which monitors and prevents emergency situations in critical infrastructures, under the Acquisition of Research Equipment notice.
Within this landscape, Universitatea din București’s focus on generative AI Mini PCs for humanoid robot automation shows another layer of the AI infrastructure picture: not just big servers and cloud access, but compact, AI-capable devices embedded directly in teaching hardware.
The Bucharest procurement is framed in broad terms, without detailed technical specifications in the notice text. Its impact will be judged by how effectively the generative AI Mini PCs are woven into everyday teaching, particularly in robotics-focused courses and projects where students can interact with AI-enabled systems.
Across Europe, universities and public bodies are using procurement to redefine what counts as core educational infrastructure, from high-performance AI clusters to humanoid robots and AI labs in schools. As these projects move from notices to delivered equipment, the key questions will be how widely the new tools are used across disciplines, and how directly they feed into the skills that students carry into the labour market.
For now, Universitatea din București’s move to pair generative AI computing with humanoid robots marks a clear statement of intent: AI, and particularly applied AI, is becoming part of the everyday environment in which students learn.
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