Hierarchical geofencing for location-aware generative audio tours

Abstract This study aims to restructure a location-aware audio guide mobile application designed for urban walking tours. Traditional points of interest-based geofencing, which triggers automatic guide delivery as users approach specific locations, struggle to provide continuous and consistent storytelling in areas with limited notable spots, thereby diminishing tourist experiences. To address this challenge, we propose a hierarchical geofencing framework that forms the basis for seamless audio guide experiences through scale-based feature switching and the definition of story serialization rules. In addition, this study proposes geofence-to-conversation techniques utilizing text-to-speech engines and large language models to dynamically adapt guide document resources to dynamic tourists’ movements. A demonstration conducted in a historic urban park area highlighted that the guide generation time in both English and Japanese guide modes is significantly shorter than playback duration, confirming technical feasibility for seamless regional storytelling. Furthermore, we define metrics such as starting time errors, ending time errors, undelivered time to evaluate the real-time performance of location-aware audio guide applications. The experimental results demonstrate effective strategies for geofence configuration and operations, enhancing user experiences in our generative audio tours. This intelligent guide approach, designed for complex urban environments, is expected to enrich tourism and foster regional learning.