Group Situational Awareness: Being Together

In many cases, museum visitors come to the museum in small groups of friends or families. Their level of ‘togetherness’ may be implied by their proximity and interaction. Position proximity is a basic requirement to enable quiet face to face conversation in a museum, while voice communication is an example of interaction. Group ‘togetherness’ may be measured to serve two purposes: (1) on the micro level, identifying if the group members are currently together or apart, and (2) on the macro level, identifying group characteristics (such as cohesion). This study focuses on the micro level in a museum environment, presenting observations and analysis that intend to set the foundations for automatically measuring and analyzing ‘togetherness’ among museum visitors.