LOCATION BASED GUIDANCE SERVICES IN A MUSEUM ENVIRONMENT: DEPLOYMENT ISSUES AND A PROPOSED ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH

What is it about?

In this paper we examine the requirements for deploying advanced Location Based Guidance Services in museum and/or exhibition environments, and we propose an architectural approach that copes with these requirements. The proposed architecture provides automatic and on demand audiovisual content retrieval, both on-site and through the Web, to different classes of users. On-site services are provided through Java enabled devices, which exploit the user’s contextual state, mainly defined as visitor location and organization of exhibits. The main distinguishing characteristic of the proposed architecture is that it separates the positioning system from the content access mechanisms, while being generic to the selection of the localization technology and the terminal device characteristics. Furthermore, it is built as an open, modular platform comprising a core of reusable components and interfaces for supporting different types of services and devices, including widespread Java and Bluetooth enabled smart phones, while being able to reuse already existing content structures. A test case of a museum e-guidance application for Bluetooth enabled smart phones is presented.

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