Interactive Museum Guide

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the prototype of an interactive museum guide. It runs on a tablet PC that features a touchscreen, a webcam and a Bluetooth receiver. This guide recognises objects on display in museums based on images of the latter which are taken directly by the visitor. Furthermore, the computer can determine the visitor?s location by receiving signals emitted from Bluetooth senders in the museum, so called BTnodes. This information is used to reduce the search space for the extraction of relevant objects. Hence, the recognition accuracy is increased and the search time reduced. Moreover, this information can be used to indicate the user?s current location in the museum. The prototype has been demonstrated to visitors of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich.