Architecture for museums location-based content delivery using augmented reality and beacons

Abstract

The digital transformation applied to museum's context is somehow usual nowadays, presenting many benefits to the visitors. However, most of the applications provide static and basic information that is not appealing nor promotes the involvement of the visitor in the tour. This paper proposes an architecture of a location-based content delivery inside a museum, based on a dynamic approach that promotes the visitor to immerse in the tour's story. The solution was created as a response to a real case study for the Foz Cöa museum in Portugal. The proposed solution uses beacons, for the indoor location of visitors, and augmented reality for providing contents based on what the user is seeing, following a narrative that captures his attention at all times and providing artifact's details that the naked eye can not see. A comparative study was made to determine the properties and compare two augmented reality tools: Immersal AR and EasyAR. The precision of beacons detection, under different conditions and configurations, was also presented as preliminary results of this work.