We Visited a Museum with a Robot. Here’s What We Learnt.
By Stefania Boiano and Giuliano Gaia
We at InvisibleStudio love experimenting with new things. That’s why when we were at MuseumNext Berlin to present our museum chatbot project, and we listened to the inspiring talk by Marleen Hartjes, we were thrilled by what she was saying.
Marleen was presenting the Van Abbe Museum project “ VISIT WITH ROBOT”. Quoting from their website: “The Van Abbemuseum is accessible for people who cannot come to the museum due to a physical disability. A robot will make it possible for them to experience the museum and the art from their own home. They can control the robot and guide it through the museum themselves. There is always a guide accompanying the robot, who helps with the controls of the robot and who can also talk to the remote visitor. A guided tour with detailed information about the artworks is also possible.”
We immediately thought that this was a great possibility for the students of our university courses as well. We teach digital communication for the arts at the IULM University of Milan and at a number of other institutions, so we are always searching for new ways of involving our students in unexpected and cutting-edge technological experiences. What could be more exciting then establishing a connection between Milan and Eindhoven and making them wander through an unknown museum using a remotely controlled robot?
So we booked a one-hour session and tried it with our students. It works like this: you install the Beam controlling software on your computer, and then connect through it at a specific time agreed with the museum. During the booked session you can remotely control the robot and go around the museum accompanied by a human being, a volunteer or a museum guide (the guide is slightly more expensive).
Controlling the robot is quite easy. As you can see from the above screenshot, there are three windows:
- What the robot sees in front of it
- What the robot sees in front of its wheels (in order to understand if there are low obstacles)
- Our side, which will be projected on the screen of the robot.
This gives you a good understanding of where you’re going and a good ability to communicate with the external world. The robot is quite slow and you command it through the arrow keys, so driving is easy and comes quite natural. Anyway, an extra layer of security is provided by some sensors that prevent the robot from bumping into obstacles, like walls or human visitors.
So how was the experience?
It was fun!! All the students were thrilled, and this is something that really “brings you there”. That said, we’d like to highlight a few takeaways from the experience (we have repeated it three times so far, with different groups of students).
- It gives you a real perception of the physical environment. Differently from the usual 360° views, the fact that you’re physically (and slowly) “walking” from gallery to gallery gives you a real feeling of the distances, the spaces, the crowds etc.
- Communicating with the guide and other visitors is great! This is one of the most powerful features of the robot. Even if the audio it’s far from perfect, you can still understand quite well what people are saying. Other visitors are very keen on communicating with you, even strangers, because they see a curious object with human faces on its screen going around the galleries and talking with a guide.
3. The camera is not good enough to enjoy the artworks. As you can see from the screenshot above, the small camera has an angle too wide to really enjoy the artworks. This is understandable, because the robot was primarily designed for business teleconferencing rather than museum visiting. There is a zoom feature, but unfortunately you cannot use it on a laptop, because the window size does not adapt to smaller screens. The user interface need some tuning to be really usable on an LCD projector in a classroom like we were doing, but we’re sure this will be done in the near future.
4. The human element is still decisive. Once the initial “wow” effect has faded, what really makes the difference is the quality of the museum and especially the quality of the people walking you around. We definitely noticed that good guides make the difference, even more than in real presence, due to the smaller angle of the view and the fact that you’re not in the actual museum.
5. It makes you want to go there. Maybe because the Van Abbe Museum is such an interesting museum, the “robot” visit was a perfect taster, really fostering the desire to see “the real thing”. that’s why, even if the project was launched primarily with accessibility in mind, we think that once a few details are fixed, this kind of tele-guided tours could be a powerful educational and marketing tool as well.
