October 25, 2017
The Birth of EMAR, the Little Robot that Could–Help Teens
What happens when a health and stress researcher and a human centered design professor join forces? EMAR. Well, not exactly. Dr. Elin Björling and Dr. Emma Rose were discussing stress in teenagers and ways to gauge the data, and through that conversation the idea of a social robot for teens sprouted. They knew that robots are likely an interactive way to gather data from teenagers. If you were a teenager in the age of technology that we live in, would you rather interact with a person or a robot regarding your stress levels?
October 15, 2017
Project EMAR Year 2: Funding, an Award, and a New Team!
In June, the team learned that the National Science Foundation awarded a $1.1 million National Robotics Initiative grant to fund further development of EMAR. The work is now supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant no. NRI-1734100. This grant will certainly help the team reach the goal of making EMAR a high-fidelity and fully functioning social robot able to gather stress and mood data, while reducing stress in teens!
Project EMAR Year 2: Funding, an Award, and a New Team!
So much has happened over the summer to move Project EMAR forward! Big News! National Science Foundation Funding In June, the team learned that the National Science Foundation awarded a $1.1 million National Robotics Initiative grant to fund further development of EMAR. The work is now supported in part by the National Science Foundation…
June 16, 2017
Spring Quarter for Project EMAR!
This is the end of Project EMAR year #1! The quarter brought a lot of new changes and developments for Project EMAR. While the tech team was busy at work creating an entirely new Version 3 of EMAR, the research team spent the past 10 weeks gathering new data from local high schools, analyzing the existing data, and drafting a research paper about our recent findings.
March 13, 2017
EMAR’s V2 & V3 Hardware
Version 3 (V3) was dreamed up in Fall Quarter 2016, directly a result of the shortcomings of dealing with its predecessor. The goal was to improve reliability and collaboration. These goals have largely been realized with V3 even without feature parity with version 2. The approach taken with V3 has allowed us to compartmentalize the hardware aspect of the project, effectively turning a hardware project into a software project making it possible for anyone to contribute directly to the development without the need for the physical device.
