Virtual guides to assist visitors in the SAGRES virtual museum

The SAGRES system is an environment on the Web, that facilitates the presentation of museum information, in a manner adapted to the individual characteristics of each visitor. The interaction with the system may occur individually or in groups of students. The system also offers resources to support some forms of cooperative learning, allowing visitors to interact both synchronously and asynchronously, and both locally, inside the museum, and non-locally, in places geographically distant from the museum. The visitors are assisted by virtual guides, software agents, which monitor the visitors' actions. The agents use the directed improvisation human-computer interaction paradigm to interact with visitors. They improvise, while helping the visitor, a group of behaviors similar to human behaviors (happiness, satisfaction and vibration), making the interaction more friendly. This system has been developed in the Museum of Science and Technology at PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil.