ELEC 432

Virtual Museum Tour Guide

For many years museums have provided self-paced audio guides for featured exhibits. The earliest units required the user to go through the exhibit in a fixed order, the only control being to start and stop the recording (which was originally on a cassette tape). The advent of low cost digital storage allowed random access to the program. The user could view the exhibit in any order, entering the appropriate number at each featured item. More modern systems determine the user's location based on RFID tags placed at the featured items in the exhibit.

Since all of these systems are economical and easy to set up, our more complex system will have to provide significant advantages in order to gain acceptance. Here are some possibilities:

RFID tags are designed to announce their presence, not their location. If tagged items are too close together errors in identification may occur.
If your system can provide the orientation as well as location of the wearer, it is possible to provide information about the layout of the exhibit as well as its contents, e.g. "To your left are several paintings by Monet while the wall to the right contains a number of important works of Renoir."
If the location sensing element can be held in the hand it would be possible to point to objects or even portions of objects to request additional information.
The existance of a radio channel allows for a number of additional features such as radio distribution of program material, live interaction with a human docent, etc.

Since the MFA and Museum of Natural Science are unlikely to award us the contracts for their next exhibits your demonstration venue will be the end of year Senior Design exhibit in Duncan Hall.