Page 297 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

6. Artificial intelligence and robotsWe have left until the end a technology that seems partly evident and partly the product of science fiction: the use of robots to perform various tasks in the museum environment. Although the most significant case is currently the project implemented at Tate in London, it is also an idea that museums have been working on for some time.We have described it as evident because in other sectors there are already prototypes of holograms (airports, for example) in which virtual figures have replaced real people; and as science fiction because, without a doubt, we still identify the existence of robots with this literary and artistic genre, even though their presence is alreadya reality and it will not be long before they become common devices in everyday life with all kinds of functions.Robots are currently being used in the museum sector chiefly as an educational resource, eitheras part of experiments and produced as pro- totypes in workshops for children and young people, or as a museum device. But these are not the best-known cases. As we have pointed out, the use of robots as exhibition guides is the most salient example.The first case of the use of a robot to guide visits was the pilot projects run by the University of Bonn in 1997. The robot, called Rhino,210, was designed to guide visitors and was put into practice at the Deutsches Museum in Bonn. An advanced model, Minerva, was introduced the following year at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington).In both cases their function was to act as guides around the collections. The work was focused more on familiarising visitors with robots and demonstrating certain advances in robotics than on making use of their advantages in museums and cultural centres.