The Development of the Mobile Interactive Virtual Nuclear Educator With AR and RAG for Learning Nuclear Energy in Indonesia

The conventional way to search the information on the internet usually uses search engines, however, the results only provide textual information. There has been a noticeable gap in student engagement, particularly among young generations like elementary to high school students, who prefer interactive learning methods. Specifically, there is a need to focus on disseminating information about nuclear energy, particularly its application in nuclear power plants in accordance with Indonesia’s master plan about nuclear energy as it is essential for the younger generation to be informed. Therefore, we developed an Android mobile app namely AR-Deni with Augmented Reality (AR) technology that interactively provides information through touch and voice chat with an animated 3D virtual educator. To answer the question, it utilizes retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology with verified documents that could elevate students' curiosity and understanding about nuclear energy information while ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the information provided. Further, we used extreme programming (XP) as a development methodology to plan and test the app. We test the app with user acceptance testing (UAT) and performance testing with 12 scenarios to interact in Q&A. The results showed that the AR-Deni developed with the XP method and passed the 100% scenario in UAT. Regarding the performance, the RAG needed more response time to find the answer from specific questions rather than general questions. Hence, the AR-Deni could be used as an interactive virtual nuclear educator for learning media.