PRE2024 3 Group16

Group members

Name	Studentnumbers
Tim Hobbes	1798251
Eline Smit	1903071
Veselin Todorov	1789198
Georgi Kalchev	1855441
Ania Bărbulescu	1823612

AI-powered social robot intended to assist tourists in cities

Introduction

Problem statement

Tourism is a vital component of many cities' economies, attracting millions of visitors each year. However, tourists often face challenges when navigating unfamiliar cities, such as language barriers, difficulty finding attractions, and accessing real-time, reliable information about transportation, local events, and cultural landmarks. Traditional resources, like guidebooks, maps, static information kiosks or local transportation apps often fall short in providing personalized, interactive, and immediate assistance. Human guides, while helpful, may not always be available, accessible or financially sustainable. As tourism continues to expand globally, there is a pressing need for an innovative, app-based solution (the "social robot") that enhances the tourist experience. By leveraging technology, this solution can provide real-time, personalized, and interactive assistance, addressing key pain points for travelers while improving accessibility and convenience.

While this problem statement is broad at the outset, it serves as a starting point for our research. Through market analysis and feasibility studies, we will refine the scope to address the most pressing challenges faced by tourists. Starting with a broad problem statement allows us to explore various pain points and potential solutions before honing in on a specific, impactful approach. This iterative refinement process ensures that our final solution is both viable and effectively meets the needs of travelers.

Objectives

The primary objective of this project is to develop an AI-powered social robot designed to assist tourists in cities by providing real-time, interactive, and personalized support. The robot will serve as a multilingual city guide, offering recommendations, directions, cultural insights, and event updates to tourists in a friendly and accessible manner. Our key objectives are to:

• Enhance the tourist experience: Provide immediate, accurate, and useful information to visitors.
• Promoting local attractions and businesses: Offer tailored suggestions to tourists based on the tourists’ interests and the interests of the local community
• Establish an effective means of communication: The social robot should establish an effective means of communication with the tourists so that the social robot can be understood effectively

Target group and users

The primary target group for this AI-powered social robot consists of domestic and international tourists exploring cities. Tourists often arrive in unfamiliar environments with limited knowledge of the city's layout, attractions, and cultural norms. Language barriers, confusing public transportation systems, and the overwhelming amount of information available online can create a sense of disorientation and frustration. The social robot is designed to address these challenges by serving as an intelligent, interactive guide that enhances the tourist experience from the moment they arrive until their departure.

A significant secondary target group, and the group poised to benefit most from a financial perspective, are local business owners and the city tourism board in the areas where the social robot operates. By enhancing the overall experience for tourists, these stakeholders can directly influence visitor satisfaction, which, in turn, contributes to long-term economic growth within the city.

The social robot, through its personalized recommendations and real-time information delivery, can promote local attractions, restaurants, shops, and cultural events. This not only increases tourist engagement with local businesses but also fosters greater spending and prolonged stays. By providing tailored suggestions based on user preferences, the robot acts as a dynamic marketing tool, directing tourists toward hidden gems, seasonal events, and locally-owned establishments that might otherwise go unnoticed.

For the city tourism board, the robot serves as a powerful tool for promoting the city’s cultural identity and ensuring positive word-of-mouth among visitors. A seamless, enjoyable tourist experience enhances the city’s reputation, encouraging repeat visits and attracting new travelers.

State-of-the-art

Number	Summary	Citation
1	Mobile application with p.o.i. and ML to guide tourists between p.o.i.	T. Ghani, N. Jahan, S. H. Ridoy, A. T. Khan, S. Khan and M. M. Khan, "Amar Bangladesh - a Machine Learning Based Smart Tourist Guidance System," 2018 2nd International Conference on Electronics, Materials Engineering & Nano-Technology (IEMENTech), Kolkata, India, 2018, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/IEMENTECH.2018.8465377. keywords: {Smart phones;Mobile applications;Databases;Google;Machine learning;Real-time systems;Linear regression;smartphone;mobile application;technology;machine learning;analysis},
2	Using courd-sourced movement data tourists are guided based on how other tourists went	Basiri, A., Amirian, P., Winstanley, A. et al. Making tourist guidance systems more intelligent, adaptive and personalised using crowd sourced movement data. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 9, 413–427 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-017-0550-0
3	Old system first introducing a tourist guide, without the use of mobile data or GPS	Cheverst, K., Davies, N., Mitchell, K., & Friday, A. (2000). Experiences of developing and deploying a context-aware tourist guide. Proceedings Of The 28th Annual International Conference On Mobile Computing And Networking. https://doi.org/10.1145/345910.345916
4	the a long and windy introduction to the use of API's	El-Sofany, H., & El-Seoud, S. A. (2011). Mobile Tourist Guide â?? An Intelligent Wireless System to Improve Tourism, using Semantic Web. International Journal Of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), 5(4), 4. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v5i4.1695
5	development of a computer simulator that can evaluate the effectiveness of various evacuation guidance methods for tourists from disaster areas	Emori, N., Izumi, T., & Nakatani, Y. (2016). A support system for developing tourist evacuation guidance. In Springer eBooks (pp. 15–28). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0551-0_2
6	Mobile application with p.o.i.	Chavan, R., Bhoir, M., Sapkale, G., & Mhatre, A. (2023). Smart Tourist Guide System. Engpaper Journal.
7	Findings reveal that the guides do not believe that digital development will affect their jobs negatively soon but they know there is a threat of robots with artificial intelligence, the use of digital applications, and smart technologies.	Nazli, M. (2020). THE FUTURE OF TOURIST GUIDANCE CONCERNING THE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY: a COMPARATIVE STUDY. International Journal of Contemporary Tourism Research, 66–78. https://doi.org/10.30625/ijctr.692463
8	Then by defining collaborative filtering approach on the history meaningful POIs are extracted.	Fenza, G., Fischetti, E., Furno, D., & Loia, V. (2011). A hybrid context aware system for tourist guidance based on collaborative filtering. 2022 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE). https://doi.org/10.1109/fuzzy.2011.6007604
9	The paper also describes our development of an efficient broadcast mechanism which enables visitors' requests for information to be serviced quickly despite the wireless communications infrastructure employed.	Davies, N., Cheverst, K., Mitchell, K., & Friday, A. (1999). “Caches in the air”: disseminating tourist information in the GUIDE system. Proceedings WMCSA’99, 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1109/mcsa.1999.749273
10	This paper is a historical analisis of where the tourist guide comes from	Cohen, E. (1985). The tourist guide. Annals of Tourism Research, 12(1), 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(85)90037-4
11	This paper describes mobile tourist guide - a complex system that enables comprehensive up-to date information search along with personalized recommendations and services.	Smirnov, A., Kashevnik, A., Balandin, S. I., & Laizane, S. (2013). Intelligent Mobile Tourist Guide. In Lecture notes in computer science (pp. 94–106). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40316-3_9
12	This paper automatically generates p.o.i. by looking at what people are saying on social media	Meehan, K., Lunney, T., Curran, K., & McCaughey, A. (2016). Aggregating social media data with temporal and environmental context for recommendation in a mobile tour guide system. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 7(3), 281–299. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhtt-10-2014-0064
13	Our proposed system is a centralized system based on web services which provides all necessary information and tools that can be used by tourists to organize their trip.	Singh, V., Bali, A., Adhikthikar, A., & Chandra, R. (2014). Web and mobile based tourist travel guide system for fiji’s tourism industry. Asia-Pacific World Congress on Computer Science and Engineering, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/apwccse.2014.7053840
14	proposes an alternative network to 4G specially for tour guides	Davies, N., Cheverst, K., Mitchell, K., & Efrat, A. (2001). Using and determining location in a context-sensitive tour guide. Computer, 34(8), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.940011
15	evaluating different guideance systems to prevent overcrowding during an emergancy	Kinugasa, S., Izumi, T., & Nakatani, Y. (2012). Evaluation of a support system for large area tourist evacuation guidance: Kyoto simulation results. IEEE, 440–445. https://doi.org/10.1109/scis-isis.2012.6505119
16	The proposed model mimic the human tourism guide, through building relationships between knowledge based-system with the role of tourist-guide	Owaied, H., Farhan, H., Al-Hawamde, N., & Al-Okialy, N. (2011). A model for intelligent tourism guide system. Journal of Applied Sciences, 11(2), 342–347. https://doi.org/10.3923/jas.2011.342.347
17	Explores the pitfalls in a tourist guide system, mainly overcourding	Bornt, Christian & Cheverst, Keith. (2003). Social and technical pitfalls designing a tourist guide system.
18	Google maps with custom p.o.i.	Soe, H., & Sein, M. M. (2017). Tourist Guide Information System using Google Map and GPS. International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Science, 4(3), 205–209. https://doi.org/10.22161/ijaers.4.3.32
19	Overall, the feedback emphasizes the need for design improvements to enhance the tourist experience and competitiveness of Yuanjiacun.	Zhang, X. ., Disatapundhu, S. ., & Waijittragum, P. . (2024). AN EXAMINATION OF VISUAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS FOR TOURIST ATTRACTIONS: CASE STUDY OF YUANJIACUN SCENIC AREA. FOCUS ON ARTS : FAR, SSRU, 2(2), 21–33. retrieved from https://so18.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/forfar/article/view/803
20	A guidance routing system based on GPS, the multi-routes are pre-calculated	US20060100778A1
21	Glasses to capture what the user is looking at for guidance	US10268888B2
22	AR on streetview to show POI	US11692842B2
23	A humanoid looking system to guide users	US11409294B2
24	A guidance system to help tourist using POI on Google Maps	Hema, L., Indumathi, R., Prabhakaran, N., & Kumari, D. (2021). Handheld tourist guidance system using GPS. Materials Today Proceedings, 47, 351–354. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.04.561
25	Introduction of an E-tourism guide	Smirnov, A., Kashevnik, A., Ponomarev, A., Shchekotov, M., & Kulakov, K. (2015). Application for e-Tourism: Intelligent Mobile Tourist Guide. e-Tourism, 40–45. https://doi.org/10.1109/iiai-aai.2015.190

Questions for primary research for defining the problem

1. Public transport

a. Prices and cards (weekend card, week card, 48 hours so on)

b. Navigation of public transport

• Is often transportation a common necessity in the place you like to visit?
• How do you usually deal with the issue of transportation while visiting?  Local taxi, uber, walking, public transport, rented bikes, rented scooters, rented car, etc?
• Where do you find the information on the local transportation?
• Do you often need/found it useful to get a card for public transport (weekend card, week card, etc)? Specify in which situations and which kind of card if applicable.

2. Routes for visiting multiple attractions

a. Routing might be too much for a use course – out of the scope

3. Currency information

• If applicable, where do you do you find information on the currency of place to visit?
• How/ Where do you go to make exchanges of currency, before or after reaching your destination?

4. Food ideas

a. Find the right place for someone

i. Ask for preferences – food preferences, budget, local food

• Do you often have difficulties finding local spots that fit your food preferences and/or restrictions?
• Do you prefer to eat local cuisine or more international cuisine as a tourist?
• If applicable, how do you find places to eat that fit your specific requirements?
• Do you plan the food budged in advance? How?
• Is there any tool you find useful to find places to fit into the food budged?

ii. Local food summaries

• If applicable, where do you get information on the local cuisine?
• Would you find a summary of local traditional cuisine and restaurants useful as a tourist?

iii. Avoid tourist places and find actual good local food

• Would you want to find local spots to eat instead of more international cuisine?
• If applicable, how do you find good local spots and attempt to avoid tourist restaurants?

b. Query google and take the data from there

• What software do you use to find placed to eat as a tourist? (Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc?
• Do you find these software useful for finding more traditional local restaurants?

5. Find good not that popular attractions

a. How do they find local hidden gems – for food, attractions,

• Do you usually want to visit less known/popular spots?
• What kind of hidden gems do you like to visit? Food, events, museums, art installations, graffiti, etc?
• How do you find such spots? If you ask someone, who?
• If you find them on your own, explain your process of where you look, which kind of sites, blogs, magazines, travel agency, etc.

6. Find events

• Do you look for local events as part of the trip?
• How do you tend to find out about local events, before and after reaching your destination?
• Would you like to attend more international events or more local ones? Take into account possible language barriers you have to deal with.

7. Budget planning

• If applicable, do you use any technology to plan your trip’s budget?
• If yes what do you use and why?
• If not, are there any common things that can often make budgeting complicated?
• Would you find it useful to have a software to suggest a plan for your trip based on your budged? Why yes or not?

8. Schedule maker

• Have you ever used a schedule maker before?
• Do you find the option to automatically have your visiting schedule suggested for you useful?
• Does a higher level of personalization of the schedule based on your indicated interests make any changes in your opinion?

Overall questions

• Is there some place where you get most of your information when planning?
• Do you tend to make a plan in advance or just figure things out on the go?
• If on the go, how and what do you use to figure out what to do while visiting?
• Have you ever used AI (ChatGPT, etc) to aid in your planning? If yes, how did you find the experience? Any complications?

Planning

The planning for this project is going to be done in a way that is less strict than a traditional way of project planning. We think this is possible due to the short time period in which this project is done, and because the dependence of one task on another in the later stages of the project are rather minimal. To facilitate this process we will use a project management tool called Trello. Trello’s Kanban-style board system allows us to organize tasks into lists, track progress in real-time, and easily adapt to changes as needed. Each task will be categorized based on its status (e.g., "To Do," "In Progress," "Completed"), ensuring transparency and clear accountability within the team.