IQ kiosk in metropolitan information system

The paper introduces an idea of a metropolitan information system. The aim of the system is to provide various kinds of information about the city not only for tourists and strangers but for the citizens of the city, as well. The main principle is based on a philosophy of accessing data from the Internet and to provide a user-friendly interface to these data using various types of intelligent kiosks. The stress is put on the multimodal human-computer communications in both directions using image, audio/speech and text modes. We propose several versions of the intelligent kiosks and various types of communications with metropolitian information system. The first, fixed version of the kiosk is placed on public places and offers a three-dimensional model of a human head displayed on a display that gives information about the city, institutions, weather, etc. The second flexible version, of course with limited functionality, is the concept of a mobile phone used as a multimedia terminal for the access to different information. The last possibility is to use a regular phone (fixed or mobile) to access MIS via an intelligent speech communication interface.