Maugry: Augmented Reality Guide for Museums. from Proof of Concept to Museum as a Service

Augmented reality solution development for mobile devices is a rather young domain. There are very few guidelines and practically no patterns or mature frameworks for application developers. In this paper we present an evolution of an augmented reality guide for museums, we demonstrate possible solutions for major problems that were encountered. We discuss possible uses of augmented reality for mobile guide development and propose a possible alternative for augmented reality: a technique we call Smooth Transition. We demonstrate that for mobile guide a blend of Smooth Transition and Augmented Reality is the best solution. We analyze several approaches to exhibit recognition including: barcode recognition, special marker recognition and image of exhibit recognition. We analyze several major augmented reality frameworks based on practical experience of mobile guide development. Also we argue that a mobile guide must have user navigation capabilities, which allow users to find their route in an exhibition. We propose two different approaches to user navigation: spatial and semantical: first allows user to see a general layout of exhibition, while second helps user to navigate between thematically close exhibits. We also outline the basic components of a service-oriented architecture we call museum as a service. Museum as a service is a system which will allow any museum to promptly and with minimal expenses deploy a mobile guide application based on augmented reality and smooth transition.