HAMEX project
NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland

The HAMEX project is a Director Discretionary Funded (DDF) effort to explore the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to enhance education about space science and exploration for kids. The HAMEX activity began 5 years ago, and has culminated with the HAMEX Visitor's Center exhibit. Students come to the GSFC visitor's center and run through a 30 minute game using the Carnegie Mellon PER robot to simulate an actual Martian rover mission.

Adaptive Sensor Fleet - Terrestrial Robotics
MERS: Multi-Purpose Exoterrain for Robotic Studies
NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland

The Multipurpose Exoterrain for Robotic Studies (MERS) is a testbed environment created by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) researchers to perform testing relative to surface exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The MERS testbed includes a semi-realistic environment for physical testing of robots, sensors, and advanced exploration concepts; three Personal Exploration Rovers; and a robot locator system for up to ten robots.

Autumnal Quiltmaker
CMU; College of Fine Art; School of Art
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Both a technologist and an artist, Ian Ingram's work takes a variety of forms: mechatronic installations, conceptual proposals, interactive animations, and artworks that are meant to be released into the wild. In Autumnal Quiltmaker, Ian is using the PER vehicle developed by Illah Nourbakhsh's lab as the star of a robotic backyard quiltmaking party. In the Fall of 2005, PER will spend whole days meandering around neighbourhood lawns cluttered with bright and colourful leaves. In the morning, passersby on their way to work will ponder the inexplicable activities of the busy bot but on their return journey they will see the PER's day's work: all the leaves sorted from one side of the yard to the other from red to yellow.

Curriculum Development - Robotics and Java
Ohlone College
Fremont, California

Ohlone College will use the PER to teach multithreading and 'fuzzy' objectives to Java programming students. Combining a speech package with the PER software will bring home asychronous processing when the students makes the PER walk and talk at the same time. Detecting an object by color and navigating to the object, independent of distance, will require the student to develop programs where the objective requires a "try and refine" approach; a very different paradigm than traditional business software.

The Anthropocentric Robotics Project
Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

As an increasing number of robots have been designed to interact with people on a regular basis, research into human-robot interaction has become more widespread. At the same time, little work has been done on the problem of long-term human-robot interaction, in which a human uses a robot for a period of weeks or months. As people spend more time with a robot, it is expected that how they make sense of the robot - their “cognitive model” of it - may change over time. In order to examine this cognitive model, a study was conducted involving the Personal Exploration Rover (PER) museum exhibit and the museum employees responsible for it. The results of the study suggest a number of relevant components of a cognitive model for human-robot interaction.

Related Publications:

UPCLOSE (University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments)
Investigating Children's Assumptions About Intelligent Technologies
Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

This research project investigates children’s ideas about the capabilities of intelligent technology. Specifically, we are interested in whether children think of robots as ‘intelligent’ (i.e., able to think, calculate, plan, remember and learn), and whether this affects their interactions with robots. We began by asking children a series of questions about the capabilities of the PER, the Sony QRIO, a computer, a calculator, and some living things. Children were then given the opportunity to engage with the PER in a goal-directed task. We are currently analyzing the data to see how children’s ideas about the PER’s intelligent capabilities influenced their patterns of interaction.

Related Publications:

Kinematics Theory Versus Practice in Wheeled Mobile Robots
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma

The Personal Exploration Rover (PER) is being used to research robot kinematics. One of the goals of the project is to implement Ackerman steering on the PER. Ackerman steering is the turning mechanism used by cars. After realizing the Ackerman steering, a web interface will be developed that will allow the PER to be controlled from a computer with web access. The web control interface will allow users to create and test programs on the PER. The results of the PER’s actions will then be compared to the theoretical kinematics model of the programmed motion.