Augmented Reality-Based Real-Time Accurate Artifact Management System for Museums

In this article, we present an accurate and easy to use augmented reality (AR) application for mobile devices. In addition, we show how to better organize and track artifacts using augmented reality for museum employees using both the mobile device and a 3D graphic model of the museum in a PC server. The AR mobile application can connect to the server, which maintains the status of artifacts including its 3D location and respective room location. The system relies on 3D measurements of the rooms in the museum as well as coordinates of the artifacts and reference markers in the respective rooms. The measured coordinates of the artifacts through the AR mobile application are stored in the server and displayed at the corresponding location of the 3D rendered representation of the room. The mobile application allows museum managers to add, remove, or modify artifacts' locations simply by touching the desired location on the touch screen showing live video with AR overlay. Therefore, the accuracy of the touch screen-based artifact positioning is very important. The accuracy of the proposed technique is validated by evaluating angular error measurements with respect to horizontal and vertical field of views that are 60∘ and 47∘, respectively. The worst-case angular errors in our test environment exhibited 0.60∘ for horizontal and 0.29∘ for vertical, which is calculated to be well within the error due to touch screen sensing accuracy.