Exploiting Multimodality for Intelligent Mobile Access to Pervasive Services in Cultural Heritage Sites

In this chapter the role of multimodality in intelligent, mobile guides for cultural heritage environments is discussed. Multimodal access to information contents enables the creation of systems with an higher degree of accessibility and usability. A multimodal interaction may involve several human interaction modes, such as sight, touch and voice to navigate contents, or gestures to activate controls. We first start our discussion by presenting a timeline of cultural heritage system evolution, spanning from 2001 to 2008, which highlights design issues as intelligence and context-awareness in providing information. Then, multimodal access to contents is discussed, along with problems and corresponding solutions; an evaluation of several reviewed systems is also presented. Lastly, a case study multimodal framework termed MAGA is described, which combines intelligent conversational agents with speech recognition/synthesis technology, in a framework employing RFID based location and Wi-Fi based data exchange.