Robo-ethics design approach for cultural heritage: Case study - Robotics for museum purpose

The thesis shows the study behind the design process and the realization of the robotic solution for museum purposes called Virgil. The research started with the literature review on museums management and the critic analysis of signi cant digital experiences in the museum eld. Then, it continues analyzing the museum and its relation with the territory and the cultural heritage. From this preliminary analysis stage, signi cant issue related to museum management analysis comes out: nowadays many museum areas are not accessible to visitors because of issues related to security or architectural barriers. Make explorable these areas is one of the important topics in the cultural debate related to the visiting experience. This rst stage gave the knowledge to develop the outlines which brought to the realization of an ef cient service design then realized following robot ethical design values. One of the pillars of the robot ethical design is the necessity to involve all the stakeholders in the early project phases, for this reason, the second stage of the research was the study of the empathic relations between museum and visitors. In this phase, facilitator factors of this relation are de ned and transformed into guidelines for the product system performances. To perform this stage, it has been necessary create a relation between all the stakeholders of the project, which are: Politecnico di Torino, Tim (Telecom Italia Mobile) JOL CRAB research laboratory and Terre dei Savoia which is the association in charge of the Racconiggi’s Castle, the context scenario of the research. The third stage of the research, provided the realization of a prototype of the robot, in this stage telepresence robot piloted the Museum Guide it is used to show, in real time, the inaccessible areas of the museum enriched with multimedia contents. This stage concludes with the nal test user, from the test session feedback analysis, many of people want to drive themselves the robot. To give an answer to user feedback an interactive game has been developed. The game is based both on the robot ability to be driven by the visitors and also on the capacity of the robot to be used as a platform for the digital telling. To be effective, the whole experience it has been designed and tested with the support of high school students, which are one of the categories less interested in the traditional museum visit. This experience wants to demonstrate that the conscious and ethical use of the robotic device is effectively competitive, in term of performances, with the other solutions of digital visit: because it allows a more interactive digital experience in addition to the satisfaction of the physical visit at the museum.