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About

Brian Dunlavey is a researcher specializing in educational robotics, human-robot interaction, and informal learning environments. His most significant contribution is the Personal Exploration Rover (PER) project, a long-running initiative that designs, deploys, and evaluates robotic systems as educational tools in museums and out-of-school settings. Dunlavey's work uniquely bridges hardware engineering and pedagogical assessment, addressing the challenging intersection of reliable autonomous robotics and meaningful public engagement with science and technology. His 2006 publications — among his most cited, accumulating nearly 60 citations collectively — established foundational frameworks for assessing educational outcomes in unmediated human-robot interactions, where no staff intermediary guides the learner. A particularly notable engineering contribution is his work on designing robots capable of sustained, failure-tolerant performance under the demanding conditions of continuous public museum use. His research spans three iterative stages of the Personal Rover Project, demonstrating a sustained, longitudinal commitment to refining both the technology and curriculum surrounding educational robotics. For students and researchers interested in informal STEM education, museum learning, or socially interactive robots, Dunlavey's body of work offers rare empirical grounding in real-world deployment and evaluation of educational robotic systems.