Augmented reality application for children to use in museums.
The high-level objective of this project is to provide a means to educate children in an interactive and entertaining way and provide museums with an easy to use interface to deliver an enhanced educational experience.
Art is an important part of our culture. We are exposed to it from an early age, but often people find visiting galleries uninteresting and do not understand certain pieces due to lack of education or interest. In order to really appreciate art, children should be taught what to look out for when visiting galleries and museums. This is a real challenge for both museums and parents as it is difficult to capture children’s attention and present information in a captivating way.
The aim of this project is to build an application for children to use when visiting museums and exhibitions, turning their visit into a treasure-hunt, drawing their attention to interesting details that would otherwise be missed, using Augmented Reality technologies. This technology is suitable to address the problems mentioned before since it can be used to augment the artwork, bringing paintings to life and providing a means to interact with them. To display the information, a hand-held device (smart phone or tablet) is used. The user looks at the displayed artwork through the camera of the device. Pieces are selected beforehand to create a chain of events called a ‘story’. The paintings are recognized, triggering audio recordings, animations and augmentations to be displayed. Animated characters give clues and tasks to children by pointing out interesting details of paintings, guiding them through the museum/art gallery in an interactive and entertaining way. The AR characters are guides for a treasure- hunt where children collect different items from paintings. Audio recordings are used to give instructions and information on which children can be tested as part of the teaching process. The children interact with their surroundings by tapping on the screen and moving the device around.
The application also provides a story creation interface for museum employees; creators are able to add their own story content, triggering custom events like personalized audio recordings using intuitive ‘drag-and-drop’ components. With this system, museums can create entire new stories based on their own paintings by simply uploading a photo and selecting areas of interest.
Key Objectives of MuseumAR:
- Provide museums with a useful tool to enhance children’s experience.
- Enable museums to make use of the latest technologies without any technical knowledge.
- Enhance enjoyment for both children and parents while visiting a museum.
- Provide an interactive platform for children to explore exhibitions.
- Connect technology and fine art.
Main Technical Aims:
• Create an intuitive UI for museum workers to create and modify the content visitors see.
• Implement a framework that allows easy addition of new components to storylines.
• Make use of the latest technologies such as Augmented Reality, animations, object recognition and tracking.