Exploring the use of robots for museum settings and for learning heritage languages and cultures at the Chinese Heritage Centre

Abstract

In this article, the challenges facing museums to offer more ways to provide information for learning have been reviewed. The use of social robotics has been explored within a museum setting, for guiding tours as well as for learning heritage languages and cultures. The article focuses on the design and development of two social robots for a heritage museum. The first robot is a virtual human character mounted on a mobile robotic platform. It has been implemented to serve as a museum guide. The second robot is a humanoid. It is programmed for bilingualism, which injected elements of culture learning and education. The objective was to develop robots as well as robotic and virtual reality applications primarily, and to explore the usability of these technologies in a heritage museum. The implemented robots have been deployed to validate the development work and to evaluate the feasibility of using these robots for cultural education among young children. Finally, we discuss our deployment experiences and offer suggestions for future work to improve the viability of the robots for a more elaborated deployment at public museums.