A Novel Augmented Reality Framework for Museum Exhibits

This paper presents a novel augmented reality (AR) framework that runs on Android mobile devices (smartphones and tablets).  The AR framework uses the mobile device’s camera and inertial measurement unit (IMU), and does not rely on external infrastructure (e.g., WiFi or Bluetooth beacons, targets, etc.).  The proposed AR solution combines a vision-based object recognition algorithm called bag of words (DBoW2 [1]) with a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) solution called ORB-SLAM [2]. The potential of the AR solution is demonstrated in a museum application.  With the objective of enriching the learning experience, typical museum artifacts have been enhanced with interactive and engaging 3D AR animations.