Initial evaluation of an intelligent virtual museum prototype powered by AI, XR and robots

This paper presents the design, development and initial evaluation of an intelligent virtual museum prototype based on a new type of Cyber-Physical-Social Eco-System (CPSeS) framework aiming to merge the real with virtual worlds interchangeably using AI, XR and Robots. Whereas virtual environments have become prominent tools in many domains, offering shared and interactive virtual worlds, the proposed prototype incorporates multi-user and interactive functionalities together with a new agent, namely, a physical robot and its digital twin. The physical robot is located and acts in a real environment whilst its avatar (further referred to as its digital twin) lives in the virtual world. The users are able to see and explore both worlds simultaneously through the ‘eyes’ of the robot. Together with multi-user infrastructure and communication capabilities, the environment also involves additional agents guiding the user in the virtual world, and an educational game, aiming at developing a CPSeS capable of blending the real with digital worlds, and to be influenced by its users, real and artificial agents and elements. The user-based qualitative evaluation of the proposed system was favourable but also constructive providing the research team with valuable observations on its performance.