RECBOT: Virtual Museum navigation through a Chatbot assistant and personalized Recommendations

Abstract

The trend for digitalization of museums has been on the rise in recent years, as museums seek to make their collections and exhibitions more accessible to a wider audience. This has involved the use of technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, online exhibits, and digital archives. These digital initiatives have allowed museums to reach new audiences and provide immersive experiences that enhance visitors' engagement with the exhibits. Following this trend, in the current work, we propose a conversational agent that assists remote visitors in accessing a museum's collection. The proposed architecture includes a chatbot for user interaction that employs Natural Language Processing techniques for understanding the user's input. To increase visitor engagement, a hybrid recommender system is developed that combines content-based and collaborative-filtering components. The available data is modeled in the form of a Knowledge Graph, which allows for useful insights to be extracted from it.