Audio Tour - Electronic Multimedia Guides

Electronic Multimedia Guides

A multimedia electronic guide is a device specially designed to provide audio, visual or textual content to museum visitors with or without user interaction. It may also provide alternative content corresponding to different personal preferences. It may include accessories such as headphones, a digital pen and displays with LEDs or LCD screens.

These smart guides may be operated to supply content in different languages and accents, with different voice alternatives like (Man/Woman/Child/Native Speaker/TV Speaker/etc.), with text, with age group specific content. They can be operated in several ways:

• Touch/push buttoned systems will be operated by the visitor. Visitor will enter the code assigned to the object to the electronic museum guide and the related content is provided.

• Location aware systems will semi automatically operate. They sense the location by several alternative technologies and provide the related content. If the sensing area is not narrow enough to detect every different object then the visitor will enter or select the content he or she wants. Location aware systems provides better quality tours to disabled people. Recently location aware systems have been extended to include dynamic routing and image recognition capability.

• Line of Sight Aware Systems will automatically operate. They sense the location and the target object and provides the related content. These systems may include an artificial intelligence that will measure the visitor aims and interest areas and may provide shallower or deeper information for the object. These systems may need special technologies for target detection.

These electronic guides can provide the museum management with useful statistics and reports, which may include tour statistics, visitor statistics, opinions, and other surveys.