#看新闻，学英语# Learning English through News
Persephone, the robot guide, leads visitors in a Greek cave

Persephone is a tour guide in Greece, but perhaps not the type people are used to.

Billed as the world’s first robot tour guide inside a cave, Persephone has been welcoming visitors since mid-July to the Alistrati Cave in northern Greece, 135 kilometers (84 miles) northeast of the city of Thessaloniki.

The multilingual robot covers the first 150 meters (roughly 500 feet) of the part of the cave that is open to the public. In the remaining 750 meters (2,400 feet), a human guide takes over.

The robot can give its part of the tour in 33 languages and interact at a basic level with visitors in three languages. It can also answer 33 questions, but only in Greek.

Nikos Kartalis, the scientific director for the Alistrati site, had the idea of creating the robot when he saw one on TV guiding visitors at an art gallery. Seventeen years later, “we got our funds and the robot guide became a reality,” Kartalis told The Associated Press.

The robot was built by the National Technology and Research Foundation and cost 118,000 euros ($139,000).

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