Smart tourist information points by combining agents, semantics and AI techniques

The tourism sector in the province of Teruel (Aragon, Spain) is increasing rapidly. Although the number of domestic and foreign tourists is continuously growing, there are some tourist attractions spread over a wide geographical area, which are only visited by a few people at specific times of the year. Additionally, having human tourist guides everywhere and speaking different languages is unfeasible. An integrated solution based on smart and interactive Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) tourist guides combined with ontologies would overcome this problem. This paper presents a smart tourist information points approach which gathers tourism information about Teruel, structured according to a novel lightweight ontology built on OWL (Ontology Web Language), known as TITERIA (Touristic Information of TEruel for Intelligent Agents). Our proposal, which combines TITERIA with the Maxine platform, is capable of responding appropriately to the users thanks to its Artificial Intelligence Modeling Language (AIML) database and the AI techniques added to Maxine. Preliminary results indicate that our prototype is able to inform users about interesting topics, as well as to propose other related information, allowing them to acquire a complete information about any issue. Furthermore, users can directly talk with an artificial actor making communication much more natural and closer

Método de diseño de redes de medida de contaminantes atmosféricos

Se presenta un método de diseño de redes de medida de contaminantes atmosféricos, Útil para realizar Estudios de Impacto Ambiental. Esta técnica conduce a una red óptima, en el sentido de que proporciona la mayor información posible utilizando el mínimo número de dispositivos de medida. En el diseño se utiliza la técnica de Análisis de Correlación Espacial, para comparar la información contenida en las posibles estaciones de medida que pueden pertenecer a la red, y el concepto de Potencial de Violación, para tener en cuenta el número de ocasiones que se detectan en que se superan los valores de inmisión permitidos por la ley. Como ilustración del método, se diseña una red de medida de contaminantes atmosféricos para realizar el Estudio del Impacto Ambiental producido por una Planta de Procesado de Potasio

T-GameL3: development of an interdisciplinary lifelong e-learning experience in an international context

The T-GaME L3 project (Teaching computer Graphics and MultimEdia LifeLong Learning, http://t-gamel3.ub.edu.ar) intends to provide a learning environment for computer graphics and multimedia contents mainly focussed on computing and architecture domains. It is based on the cooperation of several higher education institutions from Europe and Latin America by means of technologies, methods and learning processes related to distance learning. The developed course contents are being used in a pilot experiment, from March to July 2006, involving a selected group of post-graduate students from all participating countries. The available courses have been customized to the different national educational environments by sharing the digital teaching resources of project members. The designed program has taken into account ECTS (philosophy and accounting) and Diploma Supplement recommendations. For now, the participating institutions have reached a multilateral agreement to support this effort. Evaluation results will be available by the end of July and we hope to: Demonstrate the feasibility of the process. Show the benefits for students/teachers (flexible methodology, extensive and coherent educational offer). Offer ways of carrying out lifelong learning to the participating institutions and the EU. Before the end of the project an external quality evaluation will be made in order to meet current European quality standards. In the long term, the partners intend to extend this cooperation to other institutions in order to reach a sustainable academic program of continuous educatio