On your right is the Ag Quad, on your left is the bathroom: Cornell students turn hand-held computers into tour guides

Been on a tour lately? Maybe you had to wait until the next tour group was scheduled, and then found yourself being hustled from one stop to the next. Or maybe you followed a guidebook that didn't begin to answer all your questions.

New technology being developed at Cornell University has turned hand-held computers called personal digital assistants (PDAs) into electronic guides, giving visitors a wealth of information cued to locations on a tour.

Two variations of the system currently are being tested by students working with Geri Gay, Cornell professor of communications and information science. One, using infrared beacons, is being tried out in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on the Cornell campus and soon will be tested at the Field Museum in Chicago and at Kew Gardens outside London. Another, using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation, is being offered as an option for outdoor tours of the Cornell campus by prospective engineering students.

The systems were developed by Cornell undergraduates Kiyo Kubo ´02 and Jenna Burrell ´01. Nick Farina '02 joined the team this year. Graduate student Michael Stefanone also is working on the Johnson Museum tour project, dubbed Muse. When a visitor points the PDA "guide" at tiny infrared beacons placed beside each exhibit, the beacon identifies the location, and the PDA downloads appropriate information from a wireless network. The download can include multimedia material, even streaming audio and video, as well as text.

For example, visitors viewing a statue of the Aizen Myo-o, a six-armed Japanese god of love, can read about the place of the god in the pantheon, find information on related gods and view other depictions of the same god, along with information about the particular sculpture they are seeing. There also is a picture of the sculpture with clickable hot spots: "Click on one of his right hands and it will tell you what he's holding," explains Farina. The outdoor tour, called CampusAware, uses PDAs to access information from GPS satellites that report the user's location to within about 20 feet. In this case, tour data is preloaded, enabling the device to display information about nearby campus buildings and landmarks. "When you get about 20 feet from the statue of Ezra Cornell, the computer will tell you about the statue," Farina explains. For buildings, he adds, the information zone is a rectangle extending out on all sides of the building.

Both systems include a sort of virtual guestbook. A visitor can enter comments linked to any site on the tour that are then reviewed for appropriateness and posted for future visitors. "One person left a note on where to find a good bathroom in Malott Hall," says Farina.

Visitors also can use an infrared link to download information into their own PDAs to take home.

CampusAware is supported by Intel Corp. and Palm Inc. Muse is supported by an anonymous donor.

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