Triggering the Past: Cultural Heritage Interpretation Using Augmented and Virtual Reality at a Living History Museum

Abstract

In this paper, we present a use case for the introduction of historical digital characters in the context of a living history museum. We describe a prototype system and framework that enables the use of augmented and virtual reality for placing a these characters in the museum space. The system uses a conversational interface for natural interaction, supports the scanning of objects in the museum space for guiding the conversation, and provides a common user experience on a variety of mixed reality devices including the Microsoft Hololens, mobile devices, and WebXR enabled Web browsers. We describe our character creation workflow, provide technical details on the implementation and discuss the user testing of the system. Findings from our testing suggest, that despite the analog, hands-on tradition of living history museums, the use of immersive technologies has the potential to greatly enhance the visitor experience while engaging users within the physical space of the museum.