From November, visitors to the Virtual Archaeological Museum (MAV) of Herculaneum will be welcomed and guided by Pepper, the first robot museum guide.
MAV 5.0. In the spaces of the Virtual Archaeological Museum of Herculaneum (MAV), a new exhibition has just been “inaugurated” – the fifth in the history of the pole – that promises to radically change the way of living the museum experience. Located a few steps from the archaeological excavations of the ancient Herculaneum, the MAV is one of the most advanced centers of culture and technology applied to cultural heritage in Italy. Inside there is a unique museum space: a virtual and interactive path where you can experience the excitement of a journey through time until 79 AD, when a terrible eruption of Vesuvius destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. With the November upgrade, the Museum’s curators wanted to make the visitor’s experience even more immersive and engaging. “We have designed an even more intelligent space, which welcomes the visitor and projects him into an entirely digital dimension, in which everyone can adapt their own visit path, delve into specific aspects, live a journey through time letting themselves be guided by the stimuli that the digital machine releases along the way”. Among the most curious novelties, there is Pepper: a humanoid robot that will guide visitors to the MAV.
Pepper: the first robot guide of the MAV of Ercolano
The key word for the new MAV layout is interaction. From the virtual guides that materialize to the passage of visitors to the new multimedia installations, everything is designed to make the visitor the real protagonist of the museum. Pepper, the museum’s first robot guide, will also help visitors to get into the past. “To welcome visitors, together with our operators, there will be Pepper a humanoid robot that will provide all the information on any need the guests of the structure may have and that will interact with visitors introducing them to the world of the Mav. But the novelties don’t end there. Along the way, visitors can use Augmented Reality to view extra content and insights (movies, audio, text, documents) through their smartphones. “The new software system, called intelligent play, will ensure that all the videos of the virtual reconstructions are displayed at the right time, new workstations with multimedia content will be available along the way with audio in Italian and English; the new iSense device will allow you to live a completely immersive multisensory experience. In the new setting we will inaugurate a new section entirely dedicated to new technologies: the “Interactive Museum Area” will host the most relevant news from a technological point of view: the installation dedicated to Villa dei Papiri that will be navigable through the Kinect software, the installation “Back to life” where real and virtual interact to create a new and extraordinarily immersive world, the new game of archaeology, with RFID technology, designed for the very young guests of the museum, based on gaming and a storytelling inspired by the techniques of video games, 3D printers, viewers for Virtual Reality (VR) with additional content.