XXI International CIPA Symposium, 01-06 October, Athens, Greece
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Fixed Augmented Reality applications have been tested at the
Ename centre in Belgium (Owen et al., 2005) as well as in
Portugal, Brazil and China (Thomasson, 2006), while
experimentations with outdoor mobile Augmented Reality
systems have been carried out in the ARCHEOGUIDE
(Vlahakis et al., 2004; Vlahakis et al., 2005; Vlahakis et al.,
2003) and LIFEPLUS (Papagiannakis et al., 2002) projects.
The complexity of cultural heritage related information is also
apparent in the case of museums and other cultural heritage
institutions where the visitor often needs to be aware of social,
political, cultural, historical, economic or scientific related
aspects in order to better approach and appreciate the exposed
object. It is for this reason that museums provide visitors with a
wide range of interpretation media -textual, visual or auditory-
and propose complementary activities in order to help the
public elucidate the narratives revealed by the objects
composing an exhibition. Multimedia and information
technologies have been also employed in this context in various
forms among which fixed position Mixed and Augmented
Reality installations. These systems were reported to generate
enthusiasm among the public (Ferris et al., 2004), encourage
interaction and co-participation (Hindmarsh et al., 2002) and
favor the social character of the museum visit (Galani, 2005).
However rare are still the mobile Augmented Reality
applications tested and implemented in the museum setting
(Sparacino, 2002).
This is quite unfortunate as museums present certain advantages
regarding the overall development of Augmented Reality
applications. Unlike applications designed for outdoor use, the
museum offers a controlled, laboratory like environment
(Damala et al., 2007). Documentation, research and
interpretation are among the missions of museums.
Consequently there exist usually different kinds of resources
and media that can be used to help the visitor approach the
exposed object, a fact that would allow the Augmented Reality
research community examine in depth the way different types of
multimedia can be coupled with Augmented Reality
applications.
This argument leads to the next one: Unlike other Augmented
Reality applications, destined for the experienced in a specific
domain user, museums are open to a wide public, of different
ages and backgrounds, often with little or no knowledge in the
use of computers. Consequently, if Augmented Reality is to
revolutionize the way we interact with computers, with the
surrounding environment and with each other and exploit in full
the benefits regarding the potential social impact, museums
seem to offer an ideal workspace for experimentations on that
field. The design and implementation of a successful prototype
could then easily be tailored to be used under similar
circumstances. As we will see in the next session, museums
have also good reasons to encourage experimentations with
Augmented Reality in their premises.
1.4 Mobile Multimedia Guides in the Museum Setting
Mobile guides, considered as one of the last descendants of
digital, sophisticated audio guides, are becoming more and
more popular throughout the world. Proctor provides a list of
101 projects from 1997 to 2005 (Proctor, 2005). Mobile guides
present numerous advantages as they stand in the cross section
between multimedia and Information Technologies used in the
museum setting and interpretation and communication means
(Damala, 2007). All kind of media can be incorporated in
mobile museum guides' applications in meaningful ways to
guide the visitor throughout the full visit. In addition, mobile
guides are able to be personalized and taking advantage of
geolocalisation capabilities, deliver the right information on the
right spot. Live streaming, bookmarking and communication
possibilities are also key features of mobile guides. In addition,
museum professional can use the logs of visitors' actions to get
meaningful information about the attracting and holding power
of exposed objects as well as about the way the multimedia
resources are used. Despite the fact that evaluation (Damala and
Kockelcorn, 2006) has proved these applications to be effective,
some specific issues demand further attention:
1. The interaction surface is small and so selecting and
manipulating objects might prove to be a difficult task
especially for the elder or for visitors not acquainted
with mobile technologies.
2. Geolocalisation is a very helpful feature but often
proves to be not enough as it is not always easy for
visitors to use floor plans of the exhibition space. In
that case knowing the direction towards which the
visitor is looking could be extremely helpful.
3. Creating links in between the real world and its digital
counterpart is another challenge. Difficulties in
associating a museum object with the available digital
resources could perturb museum visitors that get
easily frustrated when it comes to complex in use
information and communication systems.
And though the above mentioned issues might constitute only a
part of the challenges present in the domain of mobile
multimedia guides used in the museum setting, they lie in the
core of a successful integration of mobile guides in the museum
setting and they are by no way trivial.
Figure 2: Augmenting the real world with digital overlays
Because of a long tradition and history in the domain of virtual
worlds and humans (Bouville and Damala, 2006) and having
participated in the past in two mobile museum guides projects
(Brelot et al., 2005; Damala et al., 2005), our laboratory
conceived the idea of a creation of a new mobile museum guide
prototype, using Augmented Reality techniques. The fusion of
the real with the virtual can transform in unexpected ways the
available interaction surface and help create affinities between
the commented objects and their digital counterparts. This task
is very much helped by Augmented Reality as at every given
moment, the system is aware not only of the geolocalisation of
the visitor but also of his orientation.
