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RHINO-VR Experience: Teaching Mobile Robotics Concepts in an Interactive Museum Exhibit

Erik Schlachhoff, Nils Dengler, Leif Van Holland, Patrick Stotko, Jorge de Heuvel, Reinhard Klein, Maren Bennewitz

TL;DR

The paper tackles public understanding and comfort with autonomous robotics by presenting RHINO-VR, an interactive VR museum exhibit that recreates the historical RHINO robot within a digitally reconstructed Deutsches Museum Bonn. It combines a VR interface where visitors direct a virtual RHINO by pointing, an external observation GUI, and a science-education narrative around perception, localization, path planning, and obstacle avoidance, using $A^\ast$ for planning and the Dynamic Window Approach for avoidance. Key contributions include the VR exhibit design, a 3D reconstructed museum environment, a transfer of navigation concepts to a teaching context, and a user study (N=85) showing improved comprehension and high usability, with virtual models closely matching real ones (environment deviation ~1.03%, RHINO ~2.8%) and a mean frame rate of ~36.6 fps. The work demonstrates the feasibility and educational impact of VR-based robotics exhibits in museums and outlines future work in AR integration and environment scaling to further reduce FARAI and broaden engagement.

Abstract

In 1997, the very first tour guide robot RHINO was deployed in a museum in Germany. With the ability to navigate autonomously through the environment, the robot gave tours to over 2,000 visitors. Today, RHINO itself has become an exhibit and is no longer operational. In this paper, we present RHINO-VR, an interactive museum exhibit using virtual reality (VR) that allows museum visitors to experience the historical robot RHINO in operation in a virtual museum. RHINO-VR, unlike static exhibits, enables users to familiarize themselves with basic mobile robotics concepts without the fear of damaging the exhibit. In the virtual environment, the user is able to interact with RHINO in VR by pointing to a location to which the robot should navigate and observing the corresponding actions of the robot. To include other visitors who cannot use the VR, we provide an external observation view to make RHINO visible to them. We evaluated our system by measuring the frame rate of the VR simulation, comparing the generated virtual 3D models with the originals, and conducting a user study. The user-study showed that RHINO-VR improved the visitors' understanding of the robot's functionality and that they would recommend experiencing the VR exhibit to others.

RHINO-VR Experience: Teaching Mobile Robotics Concepts in an Interactive Museum Exhibit

TL;DR

The paper tackles public understanding and comfort with autonomous robotics by presenting RHINO-VR, an interactive VR museum exhibit that recreates the historical RHINO robot within a digitally reconstructed Deutsches Museum Bonn. It combines a VR interface where visitors direct a virtual RHINO by pointing, an external observation GUI, and a science-education narrative around perception, localization, path planning, and obstacle avoidance, using for planning and the Dynamic Window Approach for avoidance. Key contributions include the VR exhibit design, a 3D reconstructed museum environment, a transfer of navigation concepts to a teaching context, and a user study (N=85) showing improved comprehension and high usability, with virtual models closely matching real ones (environment deviation ~1.03%, RHINO ~2.8%) and a mean frame rate of ~36.6 fps. The work demonstrates the feasibility and educational impact of VR-based robotics exhibits in museums and outlines future work in AR integration and environment scaling to further reduce FARAI and broaden engagement.

Abstract

In 1997, the very first tour guide robot RHINO was deployed in a museum in Germany. With the ability to navigate autonomously through the environment, the robot gave tours to over 2,000 visitors. Today, RHINO itself has become an exhibit and is no longer operational. In this paper, we present RHINO-VR, an interactive museum exhibit using virtual reality (VR) that allows museum visitors to experience the historical robot RHINO in operation in a virtual museum. RHINO-VR, unlike static exhibits, enables users to familiarize themselves with basic mobile robotics concepts without the fear of damaging the exhibit. In the virtual environment, the user is able to interact with RHINO in VR by pointing to a location to which the robot should navigate and observing the corresponding actions of the robot. To include other visitors who cannot use the VR, we provide an external observation view to make RHINO visible to them. We evaluated our system by measuring the frame rate of the VR simulation, comparing the generated virtual 3D models with the originals, and conducting a user study. The user-study showed that RHINO-VR improved the visitors' understanding of the robot's functionality and that they would recommend experiencing the VR exhibit to others.
Paper Structure (20 sections, 6 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 20 sections, 6 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Virtual Reality Applications
  4. Interactive Museum Exhibits
  5. Our Approach
  6. Overview
  7. Implementation and Design of the VR Application
  8. 3D Museum Models
  9. Transferred Navigation Concepts
  10. External GUI
  11. Experimental Evaluation
  12. User Study
  13. Performance
  14. Virtual Models
  15. Discussion and Future Work
  16. ...and 5 more sections

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: Top: We present an interactive virtual reality (VR) museum exhibit that explains the basic concepts of mobile robotics to visitors. The user can indicate a navigation goal to the robot by pointing at it with a handheld controller. Information about perceived sensor data is shown to the user within the VR headset, but also on an external screen for other interested visitors. Bottom: User study survey results on the importance of the interactive exhibit to increase the knowledge about the presented paradigms.
  • Figure 2: Schematic representation of the used VR-setup and the graphical user interface (GUI). The VR setup consists of a realistic model of the RHINO robot and the museum environment, as well as the controlling unit of the VR. The GUI is separated into the internal VR view and the external view for visitors that are not using the VR headset but are still able to observe the robot and its functionality.
  • Figure 3: Qualitative comparison of the 3D model before a) and after b) post-processing. Qualitative changes are shown in green, yellow, blue
  • Figure 4: External screen representation. The user can perceive information from the VR view (a) and the map of the environment (b) including the robot's position (marked in green).
  • Figure 5: User study survey results. a) The information supplied by the application was predominantly assessed as easily comprehensible. b) All participants perceived the application as user-friendly c) The virtual reality exhibit was acknowledged for its visually appealing design, and participants noted that it operated smoothly. d) Our application was mostly perceived positively, and virtually all visitors would recommend it.
  • ...and 1 more figures