01
Real-time voice loop
Speech in, AI reasoning, voice out, all timed so the avatar's mouth, gaze and gesture line up with the audio.
On this page
In production · Client work · Cultural installation
Borromini Kiosk
An interactive AI character of the architect Francesco Borromini, in active use at the Oratorio dei Filippini in Rome. Voice conversation paired with an Unreal Engine avatar and synchronised multimedia.
- year
- 2024–2026
- span
- Multi-season deployment
- role
- Concept, AI design, software, integration
- scope
- Single-NPC stack: voice in, avatar + multimedia out
- scale
- Public-facing kiosk, daily visitor traffic
01 · Overview
Visitors to the Oratorio dei Filippini in Rome can speak with Francesco Borromini, the building's seventeenth-century architect, and ask him about his work. He answers in real time, looks back, and pulls up the relevant drawings, rooms and details on the multimedia panel beside him.
Under the hood: voice-driven conversation, an Unreal Engine avatar locked to the speech, and a multimedia controller that resolves topics into curated media playback. The whole thing runs on a kiosk box on site, not in the cloud.
The single-NPC architecture pioneered here later seeded the NPC framework now powering The Other World, where the same conversational loop scales to many characters across many locations.
02 · Highlights
What's inside
02
Unreal-rendered avatar
Cinematic-quality avatar built in Unreal Engine, expressive enough to carry a public-facing installation without falling into the uncanny valley.
03
Curated knowledge
Borromini's persona is sourced from primary archival material and curated by domain experts, not scraped from the open web.
04
Synchronised media
When the conversation touches on a drawing, room or detail, the controller cues the right media on the panel without breaking the flow of speech.
05
On-site, kiosk-grade
Designed to run unattended in a cultural venue: deterministic boot, recovery from network blips, content updates without taking the kiosk offline.
06
Seed for The Other World
The conversational stack and persona pipeline first proved here is the foundation of TOW's multi-NPC framework.
03 · Gallery
04 · Stack
Made with
- Unreal Engine
- Real-time TTS
- ASR
- Custom NPC framework
- Multimedia controller
- Linux kiosk
05 · Outcome
Where it stands
Status
In production
Location
Oratorio dei Filippini · Rome
Lineage
Seeded TOW NPC framework
Active public-facing installation. Each visitor session is a real-world stress test that informs the next iteration.
06 · Related
