Development of Zoo Guide Smartphone AR Application for Foreign Tourists Visiting Japan
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Development of Zoo Guide Smartphone AR Application for Foreign Tourists Visiting Japan Tomoyuki Ishida1∗ , Tsubasa Ando1, Noriki Uchida2, and Yoshitaka Shibata3 1Ibaraki University, Hitachi, Ibaraki 3168511 Japan ftomoyuki.ishida.49, [email protected] 2Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Fukuoka 811-0295, Japan n-uchida@fit.ac.jp 3Iwate Prefectural University, Takizawa, Iwate 0200693 Japan [email protected] Abstract Many foreign tourists visit in Japan every year. On the other hand, multilingualization of signs such as guide plates and road signs, etc. is an important issue. The reinforcement of multilingualization is essential to improve the degree of satisfaction of the foreign tourists. Therefore, we focused on correspondence to foreigner tourists in a zoo, and constructed the Zoo Guide Smartphone AR Ap- plication for foreign tourists visiting Japan. The Zoo Guide Smartphone AR Application consists of the Animal Contents Registration System and the Animal Contents Browsing System. The An- imal Contents Registration System is the system to register Anglicized animal data in a zoo. And, the Animal Contents Browsing System is the system for the foreign tourists to browse Anglicized contents on the smartphone. In this research, in order to evaluate the necessity, the effectiveness, the operability, the functionality, the applicability and the readability of research, the questionnaire survey was carried out to foreigners. As questionnaire survey result, we were able to confirm the great evaluation in all the items. In the future, we will rope after utilization at other tourist facilities based on the questionnaire survey results. Keywords: Tourism-Oriented Country, Foreign Tourists, Tourist Application, Augmented Reality 1 Introduction Japanese Government carried out tourism nation promotion basic law in January, 2007. Tourism was placed as a pillar of the Japanese important policy in the 21st century in this law [5]. Furthermore, tourism nation promotion basic plan was decided by the cabinet in March, 2012 based on tourism nation promotion basic law [6]. ”Expand Utilization of Tourism” and ”Quality Improvement of Tourism” are uphold in this basic plan. The number of foreign visitors to Japan of 2014 exceeded 13,000,000 people, and it was increased about 30 percent more than 2013 years [11]. The reinforcement and promotion of multilingualization are essential to improvement of civic power from these things. Japan Tourism Agency developed “Guideline for Improvement and Reinforcement to multilingualization toward the Tourism Nation” in March, 2014 [4]. This guideline present a common policy in each field through the eyes of foreigner in art museum, history museum, nature park, tourist spot, road, and public transporta- tion, etc.. On the other hand, Japan National Tourism Organization released ”Investigative Report on Inconvenience and Dissatisfaction Foreign Tourists felt while traveling in Japan” in 2009. The biggest reason that foreign tourists felt inconvenience and dissatisfaction while traveling in Japan is ”lack of IT CoNvergence PRActice (INPRA), volume: 3, number: 3 (September 2015), pp. 18-35 ∗Corresponding author: Department of of Computer and Information Sciences, Ibaraki University, 4121 Nakanarusawacho, Hitachi, Ibaraki, 3168511, Japan, Tel: +81-294-38-5138 18 Zoo Guide Smartphone AR App Ishida, Ando, Uchida, and Shibata foreign language display in signs (guide plates, road signs, and maps)” [10]. For this reason, foreign tourists are strongly hoping for correspondence to foreign languages of each sign. In the followings, the correspondence to foreigner tourists in a zoo is explained in section 2. The purpose of this research and system configuration are explained in section 3 and section 4, respectively. The prototype system of the Animal Contents Registration System and the Animal Contents Browsing System is described in section 5. The questionnaire survey results are described in section 6. Finally, the conclusion and future work are summarized in section 7. 2 Correspondence to Foreigner Tourists in a Zoo Each guide plate and brochure correspond to a foreign language at the sightseeing spots and the large scale leisure facilities. Furthermore, there are also facilities where audio guide service of a foreign language is introduced. For example, the official website in Ueno zoo many foreigner tourists visit every year corresponds to 8 languages in addition to Japanese. Additionally, guide plates and brochures in Ueno zoo correspond to English, Chinese and Korean [3]. On the other hand, many Japanese zoos have many issues such as aging facilities, decrease of the number of visitors, and financial difficulties [9, 7, 12]. In this kind of environment, it is very difficult to prepare each guide plate and brochure in a zoo which corresponds to several foreign languages. However, it is lead to tourism promotion and regional vitalization to prepare each guide plate and brochure which correspond to several foreign languages in consideration of foreign tourists needs. Therefore, we investigated correspondence to foreign tourists targeted for Kamine zoo in Hitachi city, Ibaraki prefecture. Kamine zoo opened in 1957. 4 kinds of animal such as Indian peafowls was exhibited in those days. About 70 kinds of animal is exhibited at present. About 300,000 people a year visit in Kamine zoo (Figure 1) [2, 8]. Figure 1: Kamine Zoo The official website of Kamine zoo corresponds to English, Chinese and Korean in addition to 19 Zoo Guide Smartphone AR App Ishida, Ando, Uchida, and Shibata Japanese at present. However, each guide plate and brochure in Kamine zoo correspond to only Japanese as shown in Figure 2. Therefore, the foreign tourists who visited Kamine zoo can not get profile infor- mation such as the hypocorism, the birthday, the character, and the feed etc. of animals. Figure 2: Guide Plate in Kamine Zoo 3 Purpose of This Research Each guide plate and brochure in Kamine zoo are not multilingualization as discussed in the prior section. However, it will require many costs to multilingualization of all guide plates and brochures in Kamine zoo. Therefore, we construct the Zoo Guide Smartphone AR Application for foreign tourists who visited in Kamine zoo. We Anglicize all guide plates in Kamine zoo, and create electronic data at the beginning. And we Anglicizing targeted for all animal guide plates. Next, we register the computerized each guide plate from the Animal Contents Registration System. The Animal Contents Registration System is the web system, and can register electronic data on the map. The data registrant can select the arbitrary position on the map of the Animal Contents Registration System, and upload electronic data easily. Details of the Animal Contents Registration System are described at chapter 5.1. Electronic data of all guide plates registered from the Animal Contents Registration System becomes possible to browse on the Animal Contents Browsing System. The Animal Contents Browsing System is smartphone application for iOS. The foreign tourists who visited Kamine zoo can browse various information of all animals indicated as AR on this Animal Contents Browsing System. The foreign tourists can acquire Anglicized animal information by tapping AR contents on the Animal Contents Browsing System. Details of the Animal Contents Browsing System are described at chapter 5.2. We can provide the multilingualization contents for foreign tourists at low cost by this research. Additionally, the foreign tourists who visited Kamine zoo can get Anglicized contents easily through the exclusive smartphone application. 20 Zoo Guide Smartphone AR App Ishida, Ando, Uchida, and Shibata 4 System Configuration and System Architecture The system configuration of this research is shown in Figure 3. This system consists of the Animal Contents Management Agent, the Animal Contents Browsing Agent, the Animal Contents Application Server, and the Animal Contents Database Server. Digital data of this system is registered in the Animal Contents Database Server by the Animal Contents Management Agent (officials in a zoo). And, the Animal Contents Browsing Agent (foreign visitors in a zoo) browse registered digital data. (A) The Animal Contents Management Agent The Animal Contents Management Agent can register various digital data related to animals using the Animal Contents Registration System of next section. Registered contents are stored in the Animal Contents Database Server through the Animal Contents Application Server. (B) The Animal Contents Browsing Agent The Animal Contents Browsing Agent can browse various digital data using the Animal Contents Browsing System of smartphone application. The Animal Contents Browsing System indicates digital data as AR. (C) The Animal Contents Application Server The Animal Contents Application Server registers digital contents to the Animal Contents Database Server according to the request of the Animal Contents Management Agent. And, this application server provides digital contents to the Animal Contents Browsing Agent from the Animal Contents Database Server. (D) The Animal Contents Database Server Registered digital contents are stored by the Animal Contents Management Agent in the Animal Contents Database Server through the Animal Contents Application Server. Related movies, pic- tures, and text files, etc. are stored in this database server. Figure 3: System Configuration 21 Zoo Guide Smartphone AR App Ishida, Ando, Uchida, and Shibata 5 Prototype System Our implemented prototype system