Region Radio: Concepts, History, and Overview

Abstract

Experiencing narratives about physical locations encourages connections between readers/listeners and increases their awareness of these places. This can hopefully in turn lead to further exploration and the spread of ideas and otherwise geo-fixed traditions and stories. Region Radio is an AI storyteller which assembles such stories to tell while traveling. It gathers articles from the open web and reads them aloud. These stories focus on conservation, the environment, and culture, with the goal of fostering awareness for travelers of their surroundings. Presently, Region Radio has been built with a core implementation and multiple experimental scripts at varying stages of implementation. This thesis presents a description of the core system as well as describing deficiencies and ideas for further development. Experimental work which supplements the core are described alongside a system evaluation and details on unresolved challenges. Region Radio was developed by a team of students over the course of several summers and its current state will be described. The goal of this thesis is to tie together what has been accomplished till now and give concrete suggestions on where we believe Region Radio should be further developed.