The Museum of Tomorrow - the most visited in the country, having received about 2.5 million people since its inauguration - celebrates two years of operation in December with another great new feature: the first extension of  the Main Exhibition, which will be based on Artificial Intelligence. From the 16th (Saturday), the IRIS +, a project that will allow the visitor to deepen his/her experience at the Museum of Tomorrow, will open to the public. The cognitive assistant built with IBM Watson – an Artificial Intelligence platform for businesses – was developed not only to respond to visitors, but also to ask questions. After motivating reflection throughout the exhibit about the current geological epoch in which we live, the Anthropocene, the intention with IRIS + is to encourage the visitor to think about their role in society and to act for a more conscious, tolerant and sustainable tomorrow.

Upon arrival at the Museum of Tomorrow - a space of sciences that examines the past, presents trends of the present and explores possible scenarios for the next 50 years - the visitor receives the IRIS – the institution's virtual assistant – card. Throughout the narrative course, which is guided by questions that have always accompanied humanity (Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we? Where are we going? How do we want to go?), this card records the person's data, opening the interactive experiences of the Main Exhibition.

The new experience called IRIS + will also be triggered by this (IRIS) card. But the difference is that at the end of the route, next to the “US” area, IRIS will gain a voice – the hearing impaired, or whoever prefers, can communicate by chat instead  - and will speak directly with the visitor. There will be six self-service totems, two of which are for  priority use of wheelchair users and children. The dialogue begins with the indication of the visitor about his/her main concern from what he/she has just experienced.

How the IRIS+ works

In the development of the application, the Watson Conversation Service (WCS) API (Application Programming Interfaces), hosted on the IBM Cloud, was used. The application was trained to answer questions and also to ask questions, guiding a dialogue with visitors about the two main thematic axes of the Museum of Tomorrow: sustainability and coexistence.

Visitors will be asked how they can change their concerns and, based on their replies, IRIS + will present, for example, projects from various organizations, foundations and institutions in Brazil, registered by the team of the Museum of Tomorrow, which can lead them to social engagement.