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PROJECT DELIVERABLE D2

DISSEMINATION AND USE PLAN

Shared-cost RTD

Project acronym: TOURBOT

Project full title: Interactive Museum Tele-presence Through

Robotic Avatars

Contract Number: IST-1999-12643

Key Action:

Action Line:

3

3-2-3

Dissemination and

Use Plan

Project

Deliverable

TOURBOT: Interactive Museum Tele-presence Through Robotic Avatars

Project Deliverable D2: Dissemination and Use Plan

Date Produced: May 29, 2000

Mandy Koliou and Panos Trahanias Authors:

Contents

1.

Introduction

2.

Dissemination Plan

2.1.1

Completed Dissemination Activities

2.2

Planned Dissemination Activities

3.

Exploitation Plan

3.1

Individual Exploitation Plans

3.2

Initiation of New Projects

3.3

Market Exploitation Plans

4.

Conclusions

3

4

4

8

13

13

15

15

18

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1. Introduction

The current document constitutes the Dissemination and Use Plan (DUP) of the

TOURBOT project. TOURBOT has commenced Jan. 1 st

, 2000 as a two-year RTD project funded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme of the

European Union (EU). DUP describes initial plans of the consortium for (a) the dissemination of knowledge and results gained in the course of the project and, (b) exploitation plans of project developments.

Information society, in the dawn of the third millennium, advances far beyond the mere use of technology in well-established application areas (i.e. banking, booking, office automation, etc.), by incorporating novel models of information access and management.

With a clear focus on user-friendliness, accessibility of technologies to the broader public, and integration and convergence across information processing, communication and media, research and development efforts are addressing conventional applications under a new perspective. Globalization and the ever-increasing demand for transparent and personalized access to various kinds of information are the driving forces for research in this area, paving the way towards services that are universally and seamlessly accessible to all.

Under this perspective, there is no doubt that flourishing technologies will only be assimilated in advanced applications for the broader public, only through appropriate dissemination activities and the pursue of suitable exploitation plans. The TOURBOT consortium places utmost importance to dissemination and exploitation activities. From the very early stages of the project the consortium has addressed these issues with targeted actions. Although the major dissemination and exploitation activities are planned for the near future, TOURBOT participants have already inaugurated the corresponding path and the prospects are extremely promising.

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2. Dissemination Plan

Access to cultural exhibits is a central issue in museums and exhibition galleries that is recently approached under a new, technological perspective. Although the cultural industries’ practices have remained practically unchanged for long in the cases of museums and cultural exhibits, in recent years we are witnessing a gradual adoption of media-technologies in various aspects of the sector, such as digital document preservation, media- and Web-presentation, graphical animations, etc. The advent of such technologies contributes towards providing media-rich presentations of cultural exhibits and consequently offering better services to museum visitors. Lately, Internet and Webbased technologies are also employed, for providing access mostly to images of exhibited objects.

It is clearly evident that suitable dissemination activities are needed for the introduction of high-technology application systems in museums’ environments. Especially in the case of TOURBOT the relevant technology may represent an unfamiliar concept to the museums’ community. Therefore, dissemination of the project results and objectives is of utmost importance in the adoption and use of relevant technologies. Realizing that, the

TOURBOT consortium has undertaken specific dissemination activities and has set up a concrete plan for additional such tasks, already from the early stages of the project.

2.1 Completed Dissemination Activities

Web Site

For a project, such as TOURBOT, that addresses information access and tele-presence services through the web, the project’s own presentation over the web is a major dissemination activity that contributes to its positive image and profile. The rapid expansion of internet has established it as an important data base, where information mining can be relatively effortlessly achieved and access restrictions are minimal.

Consequently, broad dissemination capabilities open up through sound and professional presentation of the project via the web. In this context, TOURBOT has utilized the professional expertise of a graphics designer to set up the project’s web site. The site has been established at FORTH (project coordinator) with URL http://www.ics.forth.gr/tourbot and is operational since the end of project month one

(end of Jan. 2000).

A number of requirements have been set for the establishment of TOURBOT’s web site:

Professional design in order to attract visitors with diverge backgrounds (museum specialists, cultural presentation specialists, computer scientists, engineers, etc)

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Fast access to the web pages

Provision of suitable information at various levels of detail.

The consortium believes that the above objectives have been met with the current design. However, the continuous maintenance and development of the web site is critical to ensure successful promotion of the project. This task has been undertaken by

FORTH and will continuously be active through the life cycle of the project.

Leaflet

Besides the “electronic” presentation of TOURBOT, other traditional presentation media are particularly useful to ensure broad publicity of the project’s aims and results.

Printed information constitutes a tangible means of advertisement, for the mere reason that it may be easily distributed to the public and/or professionals, it remains unaltered for long periods of time and is naturally accessed. In the case of TOURBOT, where the target dissemination groups are diverge groups of professionals and the broader public, a non-technical project leaflet constitutes an important means to convey information.

The TOURBOT consortium has proceeded with the production and initial dissemination of a professionally designed and printed leaflet. The leaflet has been designed targeting mostly museum and cultural presentation experts and the public, and to a lesser degree computer scientists and engineers. Visual and textual information has been smoothly integrated in it to effortlessly ‘tour’ the reader through TOURBOT aspects and its implications. The textual information appears in three languages in the leaflet: English, Greek and German, facilitating thus its acceptance especially by nonprofessionals and supporting linguistic diversity.

The consortium has supplied EU with an adequate number of copies of the leaflet, mostly for internal distribution purposes. All consortium participants have also received a number of copies to distribute according to their discretion. Moreover, the consortium plans to broadly distribute it in public events (e.g. appropriate exhibitions), relevant workshops and symposia.

Scientific Presentations and Publications

The initial dissemination activities of TOURBOT have also addressed the scientific community. A paper describing the project goals, methodology and prospects has been co-authored by all project participants and has been submitted for presentation to the

Culture Track of the WWW9 Conference, May 16-19, 2000, Amsterdam. This conference is a major international forum for activities related with the remote access

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Deliverable and presentation of information. The paper has been accepted and it has been presented within a “Museum’s on the Web” session, attracting the interest of the audience. The session organizers have requested to place in a web site the electronic slides of the presentation, which was approved by the consortium. The project is expected to achieve high publicity through this electronic dissemination activity.

Similarly, a short article that briefly presents TOURBOT has been submitted for publication to the ERCIM News, the official bulletin of ERCIM (European Research

Consortium of Informatics and Mathematics. FORTH is a member of ERCIM which includes also many high-technology Institutions across Europe. ERCIM News is a high-quality publication that is broadly distributed across research and technology organizations in Europe. The paper will appear in an upcoming issue with special theme “Robotics”. It is expected to contribute to the consortium’s efforts for project awareness in the scientific community.

The Consortium addressed additionally organizations and programs related to the cultural sector. Represented by FHW and the Byzantine Museum, the Consortium took part in a one day Conference organized by EVA 2000, held in Athens on May 26th

2000. Eva 2000 focused on “Cultural Tourism and New Technologies” and was addressed to people from the cultural sector, tourism and travel sectors, technology, media and telecommunications, research organizations in technology and the visual arts, local and national government. EVA (Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts) is a part of the original EU supported Vasari Project and acts as a cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary, local and global set of events for people interested in new technologies in the cultural sector. The participation to this Conference is an important dissemination activity since TOURBOT marks the advent of certain (robotics-web) technologies in the cultural heritage sector. The participation in EVA 2000 is expected to contribute to TOURBOT’s publicity, especially to people from museums and other cultural institutions and to open up exploitation opportunities.

Furthermore the TOURBOT project received an invitation from the University of

Aegean to participate in a two day workshop that will be held June 30-July 2 in

Mytiline, Greece. The invitation has been accepted; a report and a presentation regarding TOURBOT will be held by the project coordinator. Presenting TOURBOT research and development activities in such environments is expected to reveal interest and offer information and awareness of the project to people from relevant organizations.

The Consortium’s dissemination plan includes also activities regarding technological developments and the relevant knowledge gained in the course of the project. Towards this end, the consortium is committed to presenting its work in international conferences and other fora in the sector. TOURBOT related developments will be

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Deliverable presented in the 15 th ICPR (International Conference on Pattern Recognition) that takes place 3-8 September 2000 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference covers recent advances in many different technical fields, among others in robotics as well as their applications. Therefore it is expected that an international audience will be aware of different technological achievements being used in the TOURBOT project.

Events

The Consortium includes in its dissemination activities the participation in exhibitions focusing on technological issues and developments. TOURBOT participated, represented by FORTH, in the exhibition for Research and Technology organized by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Ministry of Technology

(GSRT) of the Hellenic Republic. The exhibition was held in Zappeion Megaron,

Athens, 6-26 May 2000.

The exhibition was open to the public and attracted a large number of visitors. The robotic avatar (with a subset of TOURBOT capabilities) was a focal point on visitors’ interest. A lot of questions have been raised and answered concerning TOURBOT’s objectives, its application, and its prospects. Moreover spots and short reports from the exhibition and in particular with respect to TOURBOT have appeared in the Greek press and media. A great interest has been revealed on the application of the project and the participation to this exhibition has significantly contributed to the awareness of the public about the Project itself and its usefulness.

Professional Contacts

An important dissemination activity of the consortium constitutes the contact with a large number of museums, covering a spectrum of collections from technological to historical and art, as well as a number of technology brokers. The museums were mostly in Europe but also in the United States and the appropriate persons were contacted and interviewed over the telephone or via e-mails and letters; prior to the interviews a short description and information about the TOURBOT project was provided. The main purpose of these contacts was to gain feedback from experts in various museological aspects in order to compile the User Requirements for the application of TOURBOT. The experts contacted were first informed regarding the

TOURBOT goals and activities, giving thus rise to a major dissemination and awareness task. It is expected though this activity to raise a great interest among museums around Europe and overseas and to initiate exploitation prospects.

The above-mentioned completed activities clearly demonstrate that the Consortium’s dissemination strategy includes participation and presentations in all proper events, like

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Deliverable conferences, workshops exhibitions etc. offered in the scientific and cultural sector.

Moreover informative material printed electronically and on paper has been made available to experts in the above-mentioned sectors and the public. The dissemination activities are therefore addressing all possible target groups that are particularly relevant with the project’s objectives. The Consortium feels that within five months a large part of the potential target groups are already aware of the TOURBOT project’s objectives and expect with great interest the relevant developments and their application.

2.2. Planned Dissemination Activities

The TOURBOT Consortium strongly believes that dissemination should be an ongoing activity throughout the project’s life cycle and after the end of it. It has, therefore, compiled a complete plan of activities that covers all possible areas where TOURBOT results can be broadly advertised and promoted. Such activities are expected to contribute to the project’s public image and profile, its exploitation activities and generally the successful implementation of its goals.

As in the already completed dissemination activities, the main target groups will be again the museums and exhibitions community, robotics community and enterprises, research and technology organizations, technical and cultural experts, as well as the general public, especially the web visitors.

Conferences and Relevant Events

Scientific conferences and relevant appropriate fora constitute ideal events to present

TOURBOT results and developments. All participants are committed to participate in appropriate such events with announcements and presentations from TOURBOT.

Technical conferences constitute the appropriate environment for presenting technical solutions and achievements within the TOURBOT project. At the same time the

Consortium plans to participate in appropriate exhibitions and trade fairs focused on relevant technology in order to disseminate the Project’s results. Similarly, partners from the museums sector plan to contribute to events or conferences concerning the application of new technologies in the cultural market.

Publications

Various kinds of publications are planned within the project aiming at the broadest possible dissemination of project-related aspects, results and developments to appropriate target groups and audiences.

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A high quality brochure is planned to be published by the project’s mid-term (month 12).

The brochure is intended to be considerably informative, more descriptive than the leaflet already produced and containing up to date results and developments of the project. It will also include illustrative material (pictures from the trials, the robotic avatar, the end user sites, etc) giving thus a clear intuition of the TOURBOT project and the implied applications. Parts from the brochure may also be provided electronically through the project’s web site.

By the same time another high quality public deliverable is planned, the report for prospects of museum robotics in EU. This will include ideas, possibilities, and prospects concerning the implementation of robotics achievements in the cultural sector. It will be broadly distributed making museums as well as robotics enterprises and technology research organizations aware of the possibilities that exist currently through RTD activities, such as the TOURBOT project.

Wall posters or hanging posters are additionally planned to be produced due to the great impact they have to the broad public. Preliminary thoughts on this subject include the possibility to create banners addressed specifically to web visitors, who constitute one of the main target groups of this project.

Publications of the project results and achievements are planned in relevant technical and museological journals, newspapers, museums magazines , etc. In the museological community the ICOM Newsletter has already been considered an appropriate publication for the TOURBOT project. ICOM (The International Council of Museums) contributes to the promotion and development of museums and the museum profession internationally.

It counts 15000 members in 147 countries and publishes a quarterly Newsletter, distributed free to all its members. A preliminary idea is to hand out a short article referring to the implementation of a Robot Avatar in the museum environment. A similar short report could possibly be planned targeting the European museums being published in the magazine of the European Museum Forum, which intends to raise the standard of museums throughout Europe.

Such awareness activities will allow the majority of museums and a large number of museum professionals internationally to be informed about the developments within

TOURBOT and the relevant applications in the cultural heritage sector in Europe.

Video

Close to the end of the project the Consortium plans to produce the TOURBOT video.

Currently it is conceived as a rather short video (duration less than 10 minutes) that will

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Deliverable present the project developments and achievements. It will target mostly museums and cultural exhibition places presenting the system’s utility and possible applications. Such a video is regarded as an important contribution to present and future project dissemination and may also contribute to exploitation activities. Considering audio-visual material as playing an important role in better understanding projects, such as TOURBOT, it is expected that the video will help in particular people that are not familiar with robotics and relevant issues to get a better insight in the current project.

Spots of this video may additionally be included in the TOURBOT web site. Such an activity is expected to be mostly for the sake of web users. The TOURBOT project considers web users as a target audience of primary importance, considering the telepresence facilities offered by the project.

Workshop

A major public dissemination activity of crucial importance consists the organization of an active workshop during the final stages of the project. The event will include presentation and discussions regarding the project, as well as real demonstration of the application: the robotic avatar will navigate and interact autonomously both with members of the museums’ staff and delegates from relevant organizations and with museums visitors on-site or through the Web.

The demonstration is planned to take place in three exhibition spaces (sites) that belong to different cultural market areas: The Christian and Byzantine Museum (archaeological and art museum), the Deutsches Museum in Bonn (technological museum), The Cultural

Center of the Foundation of Hellenic World (application of technology in cultural heritage).

Currently, a potential list of participants’ profiles in this workshop has been compiled.

This includes attendees from all organizations and enterprises that are relevant to the goals of the project. It is planned to invite delegates from EU ministries of Culture and

Education, from relevant EU projects, professionals from large museums and cultural heritage sites across Europe, international and national organizations, high-tech and robotics enterprises, research organizations, educational associations, a selection of school groups or other specific target audiences, like professionals interested in the museums collection, friends of the museums, etc. Additionally one should mention all web visitors that will be granted, during the demonstration, the possibility to see through the robot’s eyes in a museum, to get the feeling of being there, to travel virtually and have a unique experience of remotely visiting a museum.

A major goal of this demonstration is to promote TOURBOT and establish a clear idea about its effectiveness, advertise its achievements, ameliorate the projects’ use, and to

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Deliverable exploit and expand its market potential. Moreover the workshop intends to broadly disseminate the project results to attract great publicity, increase visitors numbers during the demonstration period (having the robot working also as an exhibit itself), improve the three museums’ image (all three places are integrating more up to date technology and thus appeal to a wider public) and finally open the way to future developments in museum robotics.

In order to announce the workshop, the Consortium plans to send press releases, to broadly advertise it in recognized media, such as internet, television and press, as well as through personal invitations, public relations, etc. These forms of promotion are considered as having great impact to all potential visitors, who are mostly exposed to more than one form of communication. Internet promotion targets all web users and is particularly significant, as one of TOURBOT’s primary objectives is tele-presence in the museum through the web.

Other Events

The Deutsches Museum in Bonn has drafted preliminary plans to dedicate, before the end of 2001, one of its programs (Wissenschaft Live) with Phoenix Channel to TOURBOT project. These events are taking place on Monday evenings (17.00-19.00). Around 100 visitors in the museum have the possibility to discuss with scientists about a specific subject. The Museum visitors and the scientists are connected through a teleconference technology. The program will broadcast information on how TOURBOT operates with on site and web visitors, will give the opportunity to get answers if any questions are raised and will help people having a better understanding of the relevant application.

Summary

The following table summarizes the TOURBOT dissemination activities with additional information regarding their status and the addressed target groups.

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Web Site

Activity

D i s s e m i n a t i o n A c t i v i t i e s

Target Group

Leaflet

Scientific Presentations-

Publications

Brochure

Events

Professional Contacts

Video

Workshop

Status

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Completed Sub-activities,

Ongoing Sub-activities

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Completed

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities

Completed Sub-activities,

Ongoing Sub-activities

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Planned

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Planned

Professionals Completed Sub-activities,

Ongoing Sub-activities

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Planned

Professionals, Museum and

Technical Communities,

Broader Public

Planned

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3. Exploitation Plan

The possibilities of new paradigms in providing access to cultural exhibits offered by the information society are developing fast. In recent years we are witnessing a gradual adoption of media-technologies in various aspects of the sector, such as digital document preservation, media- and Web-presentation, graphical animations, etc. The advent of such technologies contributes towards providing media-rich presentations of cultural exhibits and consequently offering better services to museum visitors. Lately, Internet and Webbased technologies are also employed, for providing access mostly to images of exhibited objects.

Worldwide, many museums and exhibition places are currently exploiting such technologies, aiming at increasing their market shares. The potential offered by the introduction of media technologies is immense, provided that novel and attracting services will be offered as a result of such developments.

The TOURBOT concept is in-line with the above issues, facilitating tele-presence and effective access to cultural exhibits through robotic avatars. TOURBOT capitalizes on cutting-edge technologies providing increased interaction with the site being visited.

Effectively, it augments existing communication networks that are nowadays used to transmit information that is viewed via a browser, with mobile platforms at particular nodes that allow for dynamic selection and acquisition of the information to be retrieved.

An extrapolation of current trends reveals that its employment in the cultural industries’ practices will have a positive impact.

The results of the TOURBOT project will be readily exploitable by the consortium partners and other interested bodies. All participating organizations are committed to the dissemination and exploitation of the project developments. Specific plans include the commercial exploitation of products and services based on TOURBOT and the introduction of related technology in everyday exhibition practices.

3.1 Individual Exploitation Plans

Participants that act as technology providers will exploit technological developments of

TOURBOT. Such developments include the robotic navigation, computer vision and interface technologies. Moreover, the close collaboration between the four technical partners (FORTH, UNIBONN, THEON and UNIFR) will be beneficial for all of them.

THEON expects to benefit by getting access to the latest research in sensor-based navigation and computer vision; FORTH, UNIBONN and UNIFR are particularly interested in teaming up with THEON due to the prospects and potential of this cooperation.

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FHW is highly interested in commercializing products and services based on TOURBOT and introducing related technology in everyday exhibition practices. The current exhibition in the premises of FHW, where TOURBOT is planned to be used, is the

“Krossia, Chitones, Doulamades, Velades. 4000 years of Hellenic Costume” from prehistory until the beginning of 20 th

century. FHW attempts to incorporate modern technologies in all its activities and has already established a large visitors’ group, which is mainly attracted due to the application and use of modern technology in all its activities. TOURBOT is considered as a major attraction, which will enhance FHW place in the market sector.

The two end-user partners of TOURBOT, MUSBON and BYZMUS, aim at exploiting the project results in their own premises. The Deutsches Museum Bonn had already twice the possibility to test a primitive robot (RHINO), developed by UNIBONN, as a museum tour guide. The curiosity and interest of the museum visitors was enormous. As

MUSBON is the first museum for contemporary science and research in Germany, and following the very positive experiences gained with RHINO in the museum, it is strongly believed that a permanent robot within the museum, that will serve Web-visitors and will also act as tour guide, would represent a great enrichment for the museum. One of the museum's goals is to explain the significance of expensive basic research. A museum robot could help in demonstrating how the results of basic research develop into actual practical applications. This would help to increase the acceptance of high technology within the general public, the so-called public understanding of science.

Additionally, MUSBON is organizing in cooperation with two other museums

(Washington, Munich) the Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize (1901-2001), which is planned to open at the beginning of 2002. Since different exhibits will be presented at the same time in the three museums, MUSBON is currently considering the exploitation of TOURBOT technology, in providing the visitors of one museum with access to the exhibits of the other two museums.

BYZMUS also plans to introduce a mobile agent (TOURBOT) in the presentation of cultural commodities being exhibited. The application of a robotic avatar to the

Byzantine Museum will contribute substantially to a better and greater promotion of the

Museum, not only to the visitors but also mainly to those who are not able to travel and see its treasures with their own eyes. Moreover, the use of this pioneering technology offers the users multiple possibilities and renders the Museum friendlier to them.

Especially regarding children and adolescents, already familiar with modern technology, the Museum believes that it will be a motive and a spur for them to visit the Museum again and approach the exhibits in a better way.

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3.2 Initiation of New Projects

Besides the above-mentioned direct exploitation plans, new vistas open for TOURBOT results in other exhibition sectors, such as large trade fairs. In the latter, and generally in exhibitions where the items presented (content being displayed) change often in short periods of time, TOURBOT technology may be extremely valuable for providing access to distant users. In such cases it is not realistic to provide even simple, static images of the exhibits on the Web, since the dynamic nature of the exhibition’s content would turn the Web pages obsolete very fast. The situation is even worse with richer representations of the exhibits (videos, virtual reality representations), since the effort needed for their development may not pay off. Alternatively, robotic avatars can be introduced in these cases to seamlessly provide access to Web-visitors to the contemporary content of the exhibition. The consortium aims at initiatives to introduce and exploit TOURBOT developments in such cases and pursue demonstration and/or commercial activities where appropriate.

Additionally, the technical partners of TOURBOT are drafting plans to exploit technologies developed within TOURBOT by transferring them in other application areas where similar technologies are needed. Surveillance of indoor environments, teleoperation, maintenance, and tele-control constitute only a few tasks than can benefit from

TOURBOT technologies.

3.3 Market Exploitation Plans

Market exploitation of new technologies and related products and services is the ultimate goal of RTD activities. Under this perspective, the consortium participants address market exploitation with a clear focus in new products and services.

The consortium end-users (museums and exhibition places) aim at promoting their organizations through TOURBOT, and thus increasing their access and market share. The museums have made initial thoughts on introducing the TOURBOT system after the end of the project in temporary or permanent exhibition spaces. Such thoughts have been made under the spirit that the TOURBOT system helps museums increasing their accountability in terms of responding to market forces (increased used of technology in cultural spaces), quality of service, relevance to perceived needs. The museum ameliorates its profile in the market, as it is estimated that the TOURBOT system supports educational programs in national and international level, groups of visitors with special needs or low socio-economic level, encourages interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaboration and partnerships and supports research.

Furthermore attracting web visitors through TOURBOT is of dual significance regarding access to museums. On one hand the museums will offer globalization of access, since

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Deliverable the web visitors are identified as a large subset of the general public. On the other hand the opportunity offered to visit the museum through the web rates highly in cases that web visitors grow such interest in the museum’s exhibits to actually visit the museum in the future. This eventually is a way of increasing visitor numbers. Furthermore as museums entrance is due to a fee, the end users are considering charging the web visitors too, if a temporary or permanent installation after the end of the Project will be decided.

The commercial partner of TOURBOT (THEON) is anticipating an increase in its market share by promoting similar robotic platforms to interested museums and exhibition places. Moreover, relevant plans can be envisioned for selling and leasing platforms for related applications in various commercial sectors.

A major thrust in the TOURBOT consortium comes from the participation of two

Universities and a Research Institution. Such organizations have traditionally not considered market exploitation of their research results. In the case of TOURBOT the corresponding participants are already paving the way to commercially exploit project results and developments.

The University of Freiburg in cooperation with Androtec GmbH, a spin-off company started in Kaiserslautern, has recently done first steps towards this direction. In this particular project, the technology for three-dimensional mapping that is developing within the TOURBOT project will be exploited and transferred into a product. Androtec and University of Freiburg have recently submitted to the German Federal Ministry of

Education and Research a research and development proposal for the support of this technology implementation.

FORTH has also started first contacts with exhibition places aiming at introducing

TOURBOT related services in commercial exhibitions. At the same time preliminary plans have been made with respect to provide the system to temporary cultural exhibitions and charge them. Such efforts will capitalize on project developments and will be pursued throughout the life cycle of the project as well as after the end of it.

Summary

The following table summarizes the TOURBOT exploitation activities with information regarding consortium participants involved.

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E x p l o i t a t i o n A c t i v i t i e s

Activity

Follow-up Projects

Participant(s) Involved

ALL

Relevant Applications

In-house System Exploitation

FORTH, UNIBONN,

UNIFR, THEON

FHW, MUSBON,

BYZMUS

Enhanced Profile

Exploitation in Cultural /

Commercial Exhibitions

ALL

FORTH, UNIBONN,

UNIFR, THEON

Product/Service Commercialization ALL

Market Prospects ALL

Project

Deliverable

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4. Conclusions

It is evident from the information outlined above that all consortium partners are committed in disseminating and exploiting the results of the project. The Partners are also perfectly aware that a multitude of exploitation possibilities exist for the results of

TOURBOT and they are capable for capitalizing on them.

The dissemination strategy involves the announcement of the project and its results in proper fora and symposia and the broad advertisement of TOURBOT’s concepts. At the same time an exploitation plan has already been compiled in order to integrate the results of the project in the partners’ activities and to develop further use opportunities in relevant application areas.

The Dissemination and Use Plan will be revised every six months, since the dissemination activities constitute an ongoing procedure throughout the project that enhances exploitation possibilities. At the end of the project, by month 24, the

Technological Implementation Plan will be prepared, including the actual achievements and plans in dissemination and exploitation activities.

The Consortium considers the Dissemination and Use Plan as an important part of their work towards the successful completion of the project but also in terms of maximizing the impact of TOURBOT results across Europe.

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