<title>EventScope: a telescience interface for Internet-based education</title>

Abstract

The goal of Earth and planetary exploration through telescience/telerobotics/telepresence is to broaden our understanding of the universe. Because education is a proven avenue for disseminating information, the goal of the EventScope project at Carnegie Mellon University is to merge educational software and a telescience/telerobotics/telepresence mission interface for use within classroom settings in order to provide more direct connections to new information. Answering individual scientific questions requires the ability to interact with a mission on a first-person level - for instance, a student can glean a wealth of information by remotely exploring the contours of a particular rock formation. A limitation on scientific inquiry using robotics is that physical machines can be in only one place at one time. EventScope addresses these scalability issues by enabling dynamic interaction with mission information through tools that allow users to navigate independently of the spatio-temporal nature of a robotic expedition. Further, interface communication tools allow science educators and scientists to mark representations of remote sites to convey their own experiences to students on a mass scale.