Persephone guides the visitors inside Alistrati cave, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of Thessaloniki, Greece. Persephone, billed as the world’s first robot used as a tour guide inside a cave, has been welcoming visitors to the Alistrati cave, since mid-July. — Photos: AP
ALISTRATI, Greece: Persephone is a tour guide in Greece, but perhaps not the type people are used to.
Billed as the world’s first robot tour guide inside a cave, Persephone has been welcoming visitors since mid-July to the Alistrati Cave in northern Greece, 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of the city of Thessaloniki.
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Persephone guides the visitors inside Alistrati cave, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of Thessaloniki, Greece. Persephone, billed as the world’s first robot used as a tour guide inside a cave, has been welcoming visitors to the Alistrati cave, since mid-July. — Photos: AP
The multilingual robot covers the first 150 meters (roughly 500 feet) of the part of the cave that is open to the public.
The robot moves along a walkway, passing through an ornate landscape of stalactites and stalagmites.
Persephone, with a white body, black head and two luminous eyes, moves on wheels, guiding visitors to the first three of eight stops along the walkway.
The robot was named Persephone because, according to one version of the ancient Greek myth, it was in a nearby plain that Pluto – the god of the underworld who was also known as Hades – abducted Persephone, with the consent of her father Zeus, to take her as his wife.
A guide programs Persephone inside Alistrati cave, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Persephone guides the visitors inside Alistrati cave, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of Thessaloniki, Greece.
A guide programs Persephone inside Alistrati cave, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Persephone’s low speed slows down the tour, which is conducted in three languages simultaneously. Her creators are considering ways to speed her up.
Persephone is not the only technology used inside the cave. There’s a cellphone app in which a visitor, scanning a QR code, can see the Alistrati Beroni. That’s a microorganism that is only found in this cave, in the huge mounds of bat droppings left behind when the cave was opened and the bats migrated elsewhere.
Billed as the world’s first robot used as a tour guide inside a cave, Persephone was built by the National Technology and Research Foundation and cost €118,000 (US$139,000 or RM584,406).
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