The Polara Project was CD-ROM/WWW hybrid project designed to make astronomy fun for gradeschool children through interactive activities placed in the context of an engaging storyline. The child's experience in this storyworld was mediated by an interactive autonomous robot character named, b'Nex (binhex).
We completed a number of activities and participated in a distributed education project with two Indiana gradeschools (Harmony in Bloomington, IN and Longfellow in Indianapolis). Group members were Rick Dietz, Bart Everson, Heath Byers, Tom Hunt, Mary Ann Koruth and Kevin Kowalewski.
The Polara Project is currently offline, but you are welcome to play with the robot character, b'Nex, if you like. Go Now...
We wrote a paper about the agent, in particular the emotion model, which was published in the Proceedings of the Third International Cognitive Technology Conference, 1999. If you'd like to read the paper, you are more than welcome. Go Now...
Any questions or comments you have about the Polara Project or b'Nex you may address to Rick Dietz at rick@oacea.com
© 2000 R.B.Dietz. All rights reserved.