*-The Personal Rover Project produces technology, curriculum and evaluation techniques for robotic educational use in formal and informal (after-school, out-ofschool) learning environments. Our specific aim for this phase of the project is to create and evaluate human-robot interactions that educate members of the general public in an informal learning environment, specifically museums. Our educational goals are to further an appreciation and understanding of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), to illustrate the role of robotic rovers in scientific exploration, and to provide hands-on learning experiences that demonstrate robot autonomy. We have designed a new robot, the Personal Exploration Rover (PER) and the related interactive components of a museum exhibit to achieve these goals. Here we describe the exhibits developed and the formal evaluation results of the exhibits' educational impact and efficacy. These results suggest techniques by which learning can be measured and used as an indicator of successful human-robot interaction.
Abstract* -Installation of a robot system in a publicly accessible technical museum poses nontrivial problems along three axes. First, the robot must be reliable, both by failing rarely in spite of continuous, daily use and by allowing museum staff to easily return the robot to service. Second, the robot must perform without the need for staff intervention, from system autonomy to energetics enabling full-day operation without battery replacement. Third, the user-end interaction software must be self-explanatory as well as instructional and engaging in order to effectively communicate the learning goals of the exhibit. In this paper we describe the design of such a robot system and share early results regarding its successful deployment at five museums across the United States.
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