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EventScope Head: Peter Coppin Contact: Peter Coppin Mailing address: Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Associated center: FRC For more information, see this project's homepage.

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Project Description

In 1998, the EventScope team created the first and only educational tool to give students hands-on experience of a NASA mission site. In 2000, that tool--Big Signal--was expanded and improved.

Now, we will create an entirely new tool students can use to visit other planets.

The visual interface will simulate a telerobotics control room, with each student or student team operating a simulated robot modeled on the one NASA used in that module's mission. Each student or team will interact with an onscreen team of characters representing professional scientists and engineers. These characters will convey contextual information related to the mission, as well as linking to information about their specialties. Students will be able to ask these characters questions via email, receiving answers that are actually from participating professional scientists. At specific milestones, students and teachers will be able to share information with other classes involved in the same modules. A decentralized community of students, educators and scientists will be created.

The project's technical goals fall into three main categories:

• Generating interactive, viewer-navigable 3D models based on real-world 3D data gathered by remotely operated robots (Mars Sojourner / Pathfinder and others)
• Masking NASA's powerful but extremely complex visualization tools so that students and educators can use them without extensive training
• Developing a cross-platform stand-alone program that works in conjunction with existing Web browsers

Personnel [Past Members]

	Name	Title	Email Address
	Jeffrey Byrnes	PhD Student
	David Crown	Co-Investigator
	Karl Fischer	Lead Software Engineer, CS	k@andrew.cmu.edu
	John Hayes	Curriculum Development Advisor, Psychology	jh50+@andrew.cmu.edu
	Mary Hunninen	Curricula Development	mhunninen@earthlink.net
	Junlei Li	PhD Student, CS	junlei+@andrew.cmu.edu
	Scott Mest	PhD Student
	Richard Pell	Research Programmer, Art	rp3h+@andrew.cmu.edu
	Timothy Pierce	Undergraduate
	Michael D Wagner	NREC Commercialization Specialist	mwagner@cmu.edu
	William Red L. Whittaker	University Professor	red@ri.cmu.edu

Past Sub-projects

Big Signal - We are developing multidisciplinary projects that allow the public to remotely experience places they could not otherwise visit.

Publications

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

• Using Near Real-time Mission Data for Education and Public Outreach: Strategies from the Life in the Atacama E/PO Report
  E. Myers, P. Coppin, M.D. Wagner, K. Fischer, D.L. Lu, R. McCloskey, D. Seneker, N. Cabrol, D. Wettergreen, and A. Waggoner
  Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXXVI, March, 2005. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [167 KB] copyrighted

• EventScope: Bringing Remote Experience of Mars to the Public through Telepresence
  E. Myers, P. Coppin, M.D. Wagner, K. Fischer, D.L. Lu, W.R. McCloskey, and D. Seneker
  2004 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, October, 2004, pp. 16 - 17. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [197 KB] copyrighted

• EventScope: A Telescience Interface for Internet-Based Education
  P. Coppin, M.D. Wagner, and T.E. Team
  Presented at the Workshop on Telepresence for Education, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May, 2002. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [715 KB] copyrighted

• Reality Browsing: Using Information Interaction and Robotic Autonomy for Planetary Exploration
  P. Coppin, M.D. Wagner, and S. Thayer
  Space Technology and Applications International Forum 2001 (STAIF 2001), Mohamed S. El-Genk, American Institute of Physics, Melville, NY, Vol. 552, February, 2001, pp. 64-69. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [72 KB] copyrighted