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.
