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The New Robotics Technology for Museums, TOURBOT

TOURBOT Leaflet from TOURBOT Publicity Page

Image from TOURBOT Project

Robotics technology has impacted many areas of our lives. One new advance is improving the way people visit, view, or interact with museum exhibits. New advancements in museum technologies have previously included web-cams and virtual tours, as well as some robots within the museum itself. Currenlty a new advancement may further impact the ability for individuals all over the world to access and enjoy museum exhibits.

The technology is called TOURBOT, or Tour guide Robot. The idea is to provide visitors with an interactive museum experience by using a robotic avatar. This new robotic technology will allow visitors to view museum exhibits through interactive experiences over the internet. People will be able to enjoy the museum from all over the world at any time day or night. The tour guides or TOURBOTS can provide detailed images of exhibits with different resolutions, angles, and distances as well as, a wealth of information on the exhibits, or interactions with the exhibits itself.

The project was started in 2000, by the European Commission Information Technologies Societies or EU-IST. It is expected that the implementation for this new robotics technology will allow museums the ability to reach even greater numbers of visitors all over the world and those unable to visit the museum physically. TOURBOT will also give individuals a more personalized and accessible view of the museum or exhibits than previous technology has allowed.

Although this new technology has only reached a few museum floors, the potential for robotic tour guide avatars could change the way we look at and access museum exhibits improving the accessibility of museums all over the world.

Filed Under: Robotics, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Using Teleportation to Protect Data

Cover of "A Wrinkle in Time" 

Cover of A Wrinkle in Time

Teleportation has long been seen as a staple of science fiction. From Star Trek’s famous “Beam us up, Scotty,” to books such as Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time teleporting has been explained in countless ways and shows up again and again in works of fiction; however, teleportation might soon be a part of our everyday lives.

The theory of Quantum Entanglement is very complicated and still has many unanswered questions surrounding it, but the simple gist of it is that two particles of light are “entangled” and when one changes charge, the other changes charge at the same time. Measuring these changes in charge, scientists can transfer information instantly, getting around the Light Speed Barrier. A team in China recently successfully transferred information using this method over a distance of 16 kilometers (just under 10 miles), about 20 times as far as had previously been completed. This has led many scientists to look at the future of Quantum Entanglement Teleportation using satellites to send information around the world.

Communications sent with Quantum Entanglement Teleportation would not be any faster than traditional, since the information must be deciphered with a code that arrives in traditional ways; however, QET has a big advantage over traditional forms of communication: Protection. Since information would be teleporting with QET, communications could not be intercepted.

Quantum Entanglement Teleportation is just getting off the ground, but the possibilities are astounding. The recent breakthroughs have even gotten some Scientists and Engineers to asking if it might soon be possible to teleport matter, even people, in a similar fashion.

Filed Under: Electronics, Technology Tagged With: , ,