Empathic Virtual Tour Guide

Can a computer have a personality? The Empathic Tour Guide system is a research into an “intelligent empathic guide with attitude” that tries to answer this question. This research moves away from the concept of a guide that recites facts about places or events to a guide that invokes empathy, leading the user to understand an event in a deeper sense and enabling them to analyse, enquire, reflect, evaluate and use the sources of information critically to reach and support conclusions, a learning strategy targeted by the UK National Curiculum for History. The system will mould to the behaviour of the user, applying story-telling techniques which link the memory and interests of the guide as well as the visitor to the spatial location so that stories are relevant to what can be immediately seen. It will take advantage of the current mobile technologies, where a visual sensor, an audio sensor and a Global Positioning System for position tracking, will be integrated with the PDA. Wireless technology will be adopted and interaction is multi-modal by means of text, audio and visual.