3D Positioning for Museums

Systems such as GPS run up against their limits when used indoors, but awiloc, the Fraunhofer ISS Wireless LAN 3D positioning technology, can determine locations with a level of precision down to a few metres to offer multimedia content exactly where it is needed.

Multimedia guides based on awiloc positioning offer museum visitors behind-the-scenes insights on the spot, simulating the experience of a personal guided tour.

Visitors no longer have to battle their way through weighty guide books but instead are provided with thoughtful and layered multimedia content for the artwork on display. What’s the story behind that sculpture? What was life like in historic settlements? To bring art, history and technology to life, museums and application developers are increasingly turning to awiloc.

awiloc makes the cumbersome process with conventional audio guides, where code numbers must be located and entered on a keypad, a thing of the past. Mobile devices like smartphones automatically identify the visitor’s location in the museum and present relevant information relating to nearby works of art. Visitors have the possibility to engage and explore broadly and deeply as they walk through an exhibition. awiloc has been reviewed for compliance with the data protection law, allows 3D positioning with a level of precision down to a few metres, and is a purely software-based solution that can be easily integrated into mobile museum guide systems.

Numerous museums and application developers are already using awiloc to provide direct access to the background information on individual exhibits via multimedia guides. awiloc is being used at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, the Baden Wuerttemberg History Museum, and the Museum for Industrial Culture in Nuremberg. Further projects with museums in London, Munich and Vienna are underway.

Fraunhofer IIS cooperates closely with experienced global providers of multimedia guides like NOUS Wissensmanagement (Vienna), InformationsGesellschaft / xpedeo (Bremen) or Antenna International (Berlin).

Fraunhofer IIS, Germany, presented the awiloc technology at the MUTEC trade fair in Leipzig from 22 to 24 November.