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doContents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Computer and System Sciences
www.elsevier.com/locate/jcss
mobile RFID-based tour system with instant microblogging
ui-Huang Hsu a,∗, Hsuan-Ting Liao b
epartment of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University, 151 Ying-Chuan Rd., Tamsui, Taipei, 25137, Taiwan
nnovative DigiTech-Enabled Applications & Services Institute (IDEAS), Institute for Information Industry (III), Taipei, 10574, Taiwan
r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
ticle history:
ceived 15 September 2009
ceived in revised form 15 December 2009
ailable online xxxx
ywords:
lf-guided tour systems
iquitous computing
ID
formation sharing
icroblogging
eb 2.0
The self-guided tour system in a museum or an art gallery usually provides only one-way
information to the visitor. The visitor follows a pre-designed route guided by the system
and cannot freely choose any exhibit for detail information. This kind of systems lacks an
interaction mechanism with the visitor. This research aims at designing an environment
that allows the visitor to freely select any interested exhibit and instantly share his/her
note or remark about the exhibit with others through the Internet. The information not
only can be accessed by other visitors, but also can be broadcasted through microblogging.
In the Web 2.0 era, this word-of-mouth effect can be very helpful in promoting the
exhibition. This paper presents a prototype system for such an environment. The system
is realized by the RFID and mobile technologies. It is also useful in outdoor scenic sites,
exhibition shows and even department stores for information sharing and advertisement.
© 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Self-guided tour systems have been used in museums and art galleries for long. With the systems, the visitor can receive
tail information of the exhibits. Traditionally, a handheld device with voice instructions is carried by the user. The user
llows the guidance and listens to the information of the exhibits. However, the user cannot freely choose any object he
she is interested in. This is not able to meet the need of the visitors. Moreover, these voice instructions are pre-recorded
d updates are needed for all handheld devices if the exhibition is changed. This can be costly.
Handheld devices with wireless communication capability have become very popular in recent years. Personal digital
sistants (PDAs) and mobile phones can be easily acquired with a reasonable cost. Self-guided tour systems with such
ireless handheld devices allow instant downloading of exhibition information from the server. Hence maintenance of
hibition information is made easy under such a client-server architecture. Furthermore, interaction between the visitors
d the system becomes possible with the wireless connection. Feedbacks from the visitors can be collected simultaneously
hen they are still around a certain exhibit. Such feedbacks are important for the officials and organizers of the exhibition
know how the visitors think about the exhibition.
To provide exhibition information to the user through these wireless handheld devices, identification of the exhibit is
eded first. One simple solution is to ask the user to dial a particular phone number for the exhibit; the user then can hear
e voice introduction of the exhibit from his/her mobile phone. This has been implemented by Chunghua Telecom (http:
www.cht.com.tw/CHTFinalE/Web/) in some exhibitions in Taiwan a few years ago. Another solution is to use positioning
chnologies, like GPS for outdoors and wireless LAN for indoors, for location-aware services [1–4]. However, the positioning
curacy is always a concern and the cost is high. The other way for such information services is to use the Radio Frequency
entification (RFID) technology [5–7]. A passive RFID tag is posted near a certain exhibit. A handheld device with an RFID
Corresponding author. Fax: +886 2 26209749.
E-mail address: huihuanghsu@gmail.com (H.-H. Hsu).lease cite this article in press as: H.-H. Hsu, H.-T. Liao, A mobile RFID-based tour system with instant microblogging, J. Comput. System Sci. (2010),
oi:10.1016/j.jcss.2010.02.011
22-0000/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
i:10.1016/j.jcss.2010.02.011