Intelligent Interfaces for the Exploration of our Cultural Heritage
by Oliviero Stock
Artificial Intelligence, and in particular intelligent interfaces,
may open new scenarios for tourism and the fruition of our cultural heritage.
The main prospect made possible by the adoption of these technologies is
to move from the current mass-oriented approach to an approach oriented
toward the individual. This has at least two facets: on the one side, systems
will have to take into account the specificity of the user with his own
interests, idiosyncrasies, and so on; on the other, the user will be the
main agent in his exploration, he will take the initiative and exploit
the high level of interactivity that will be available in intelligent interfaces.
With this vision of the future, at IRST (Institute for Scientific and
Technological Research), Trento, we have worked for several years at integrating
some advanced research concepts in a complex system. The resulting prototype,
called AlFresco, has been demonstrated widely and is often mentioned as
a reference system in the new area of intelligent multimedia systems.
AlFresco is a natural language dialogue system for a user interested
in XIVth century Italian frescoes and paintings. It aims not only to provide
information on a specific work of art, but also to promote other masterpieces
that may appeal to the user. It runs on a workstation connected to a videodisk
unit and a touch screen. The particular videodisk in use includes images
of frescoes and monuments. Besides understanding and using language, the
system integrates it with hypermedia both in input and output. The user
can interact with the system by typing a sentence, navigating in the underlying
hypertext, and using the touch screen. In input, our efforts have been
focused on combining the interpretation of linguistic deictic references
with pointing to images displayed on a touch screen. In output, images
and automatically generated text with buttons offer entry points for further
hypertextual exploration. The result is that the user communicates both
linguistically and by manipulating various entities, images, and text itself.
AlFresco thus provides a suitable environment for the exploration of
a large information space where the user may integrate moments of goal-oriented
investigation and browsing within a coherent overall dialogue.
A system like AlFresco can constitute the basis for culture and art
exploration at home. But we believe nothing can take the place of a visit
to the 'real thing'. The emotion is different. So the whole cultural experience
can be seen as encompassing three phases, each of which can take advantage
of technology: support before the visit, during the visit and after the
visit.
The AlFresco prototype.
A new project has thus been started recently with the objective of supporting
the visitor during his visit to the museum or art gallery. The perspective
is that the visitor moves in the physical space while seeking information
and guidance. It is important to emphasise that the user is not moving
in virtual space but in a real space (such as a museum), augmented with
a personalized informational dimension. The system presents information
on the basis of explicit input on the part of the visitor and on the basis
of his current position and of the history of the visit so far. The overall
approach includes a personalized user model that can vary the material
presented according to the different interests and knowledge of the particular
visitor. This prototype is being developed with the Museum of Rovereto,
in the Trentino region. In collaboration with a local company, the museum
has obtained a patent for a device in which infrared technology is integrated
with a PDA (Portable Digital Assistance), so that the position of the visitor
at any given moment is easily computed.
An Esprit Project beginning in June 1997, in the Intelligent Interactive
Interfaces Subprogramme, will build on this experience. The project, called
HIPS, has the University of Siena as the prime contractor and includes
a large European consortium (IRST, Univ. of Edinburgh, Univ. College Dublin,
GMD (Germany), Sintef (Norway), Siette (Italy), CB&J (France).
One of the most interesting aspects of this new development is that
we shall include the capacity of generating coherent text (to be synthesised)
for the user, taking into account the actual unfolding of his visit. Both
the University of Edinburgh and IRST have a relevant experience in the
area of automatic text generation, the field that aims at producing coherent
language out of internal non linguistic data. The process includes aspects
such as the choice of what to communicate and how to best communicate,
both as overall planning of the sequence of sentences and for the production
of correct and coherent individual sentences.
The generation system has been designed to be flexible, so that the
characteristics of the reader/hearer can be taken into account; a second
feature is that different output languages can be integrated into the same
framework without any conceptual difficulties (as opposed to machine translation).
These features are expected to open a whole new perspective for the future
of tourism and cultural visits, an area that, especially for Italy, is
of strategic importance. For more information on ALFresco see see http://ecate.itc.it:1024/projects/alfresco.html
Please contact:
Oliviero Stock - IRST
Tel: +39 461 314517
E-mail: stock@irst.itc.it
