A system that digitally augments physical artifacts/objects of various sizes, allowing users to interact through midair gestures in order to get additional information
The Smart Exhibit Showcase is a system that digitally augments physical artifacts/objects of various sizes. In particular, a physical exhibit is placed on a specially designed base, while at the same time it is projected on a digital display. The user is able to interact with the exhibit by moving his hand over a special lightweight camera (LeapMotion) capable of detecting hand gestures from a distance. Thus, users can focus on the displayed points of interest in order to extract further information, such as descriptive texts, photos, video and audio clips. In addition, it is possible to rotate the physical and the digital exhibits in tandem, so that the points on the reverse side can also be studied.
Smart Exhibit Showcase provides two alternative modalities, which are the Virtual pointer and the Physical artifact manipulation. The former guides users to select specific points of interest or specific “routes” during their navigation, which ensure the presentation of events in a specific order, revealing how they may be related with each other. The latter allows users to focus on any part of the exhibit they choose, while alternative views of the object are displayed on the adjacent screen (e.g. artistic restoration).
Target domains
Smart Exhibit Showcase is suitable for Cultural Heritage Institutions and museums, since it offers the possibility of multi-faceted study of an exhibit and at the same time extraction of multimedia information. Moreover, it can be successfully used in the education domain as a supplementary educational tool during the teaching process.
