Japan's virtual bus tour guides
By Peter Rojas 
posted Mar 7th 2005 8:49AM
posted Mar 7th 2005 8:49AM
The Japanese figured out a long time ago that real people cost real money, so continuing in their fine tradition of replacing everyone possible with some sort of machine, robot, or automated device, a tour bus service in Hiroshima is getting rid of their tour guides and replacing them with virtual ones instead. They're not just playing back a tape, though, the whole thing is actually connected to the bus's GPS navigation to sync up the virtual tour with the real current location.
That's sweet. So simple, so cool.
You can bet they still have a tour guide on the bus also. It's more about total experience than replacing someone.
I took a bus tour here once and I thought the tour guide was going to drive me crazy, she never stopped talking for hours! Great, may be there will be a way to electronically jam these “tour bus virtual guides” so that you don’t have to listen to them the whole time.
Now, if you just could get the buses to skip all the gift shops they normally stop at. What am I thinking, the next thing will probably be a “virtual tourist gift shop junk salesperson.”
It's Hiroshima, not Hiroshiba.
Can't wait to see what the Japanese will think of next!
She has no legs.