This paper describes Minerva, an interactive tour-guide robot that was successfully deployed in a Smithsonian museum. Minerva’s software is pervasively probabilistic, relying on explicit representations of uncertainty in perception and control. This article describes Minerva’s major software components, and provides a comparative analysis of the results obtained in the Smithsonian museum. Durin...

“Plug: Secrets of the Museum” (PSM) is a game played with NFC-enabled mobile phones inside a museum containing dedicated passive RFID tags. During a PSM session, 8 teams exchange virtual cards representing objects located in the museum. These exchanges are done either with RFID tags or with other teams. PSM game design results in an educational and entertaining game which is much more attractiv...

Active utilization of museums has attracted attention over the years from the perspective of lifelong learning. However, museum users have various interests and degrees of knowledge. We propose a system of translating explanatory texts about museum collections into iconic expressions by linking the texts to the museum website contents. In this system, the text is selected based on the users’ pr...

Innerhalb der Bildungsinstitution Museum entstehen durch den Einsatz von Informationsund Kommunikationstechnologien (IuK) neue Möglichkeiten der Informationsvermittlung. Im Blended Museum wird versucht, virtuelle und reale Präsentationsformen miteinander zu vermischen. Dies ermöglicht hybride Vermittlungsstrategien, die neue und vor allem vielfältigere Besuchererfahrungen erlauben, als dies mit...

The Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art. of the Pontificia Universidad Ca Chile has proposed the challenge of developing a Chilean and Latin American Multimedia1 File of Works of Art and Architecture. This archive is a system composed of: Collections of primary information sources: blueprints, slides, documents, videos, and others. A virtual collection. A database which allows the access to re...

The Monash Museum of Computing History was established at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 2001. This university museum has a growing collection of early computer equipment and a permanent exhibition tracing the development of computing technology within an Australian context and particularly related to computing at Monash University. The Museum has been evolving since its inception w...

The term ‘learning organisation’ is now a common feature of museum management discourse and, by implication, raises the issue of how a museum itself learns about approaches to ‘learning’. As ‘learning in museums’ becomes a major focus for many museums, clearly formulated and institutionally supported ideas about ‘learning’ should be an essential part of our role in interpreting natural and cult...

Museums need an interactive data collection and visualisation tool for their artefacts. This paper describes a study in which we enable access to Chinese and Japanese cultural heritage information from two history museums, the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and the Tokugawa Art Museum in Japan. Results from these museum databases were used to develop a prototype system to demonstrate advanced...

The paper examines the nature of school excursions to museums, and how the Internet, and in particular the web pages accompanying museum exhibitions, can be utilised to create authentic and complex learning environments for school students. The paper describes proposed research between a university and two leading museums that will investigate whether and how learners link web-based content and...

An interactive museum exhibit of a digitally augmented medieval musical instrument, the tromba marina, is presented. The tromba marina is a curious single stringed instrument with a rattling bridge, from which a trumpet-like timbre is produced. The physical instrument was constructed as a replica of one found in Musikmuseet, a musical instrument museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. The replica instru...