Immersive Applications in Museums: An Analysis of the Use of XR Technologies and the Provided Functionality Based on Systematic Literature Review

Vasileios Komianos - Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece


Citation Format:



DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30630/joiv.6.1.708

Abstract


Immersive technologies (Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality) are widely used in cultural heritage for communication, enhancing the visiting experience, and improving learning and understanding. Immersive technologies have found their way into museums and other cultural spaces in various forms and shapes. This work aims to recognize the main forms of immersive technologies and applications in museums and other cultural spaces and provide information on the employed methods, technologies, equipment, and software solutions by conducting a systematic literature review aligned with the PRISMA guidelines. The analyzed literature was collected through a focused search in scientific databases (Scopus, ACM, and IEEE). The relevance to the subject was assessed based on the main technological focus (VR/AR/MR or XR) and the employed technologies. Methods and approaches for realizing their applications were studied and discussed. Thirteen articles were found to meet the selection criteria, of which two focus on VR, six are on AR, two are on Audio-AR, and three are on MR. The results showed that Augmented Reality solutions are preferred for on-site use; Mixed Reality applications started to emerge as Mixed Reality hardware technology became available and Virtual Reality despite being criticized for isolating visitors. The findings cover the existing gap in recent literature and can reveal a set of good practices and innovative ideas for future applications.


Keywords


virtual reality; augmented reality; mixed reality; technologies; interaction; equipment; museums; cultural heritage

Full Text:

PDF

References


T. Kuflik, A. J. Wecker, J. Lanir, and O. Stock, “An integrative framework for extending the boundaries of the museum visit experience: linking the pre, during and post visit phases,†Information Technology & Tourism, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 17–47, 2015.

P. Mulholland, T. Collins, and Z. Zdrahal, “Bletchley park text: Using mobile and semantic web technologies to support the post-visit use of online museum resources,†Journal of Interactive Media in Education, vol. 24, no. Specia, 2005.

P. F. Marty, “Museum websites and museum visitors: Before and after the museum visit,†Museum management and curatorship, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 337–360, 2007.

I. Pedersen, N. Gale, P. Mirza-Babaei, and S. Reid, “More than meets

the eye: The benefits of augmented reality and holographic displays for digital cultural heritage,†Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1–15, 2017.

G. Lepouras and C. Vassilakis, “Virtual museums for all: employing

game technology for edutainment,†Virtual reality, vol. 8, no. 2, pp.

–106, 2004.

V. Komianos, E. Kavvadia, and K. Oikonomou, “Efficient and realistic cultural heritage representation in large scale virtual environments,†in Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications, IISA 2014, The 5th International Conference on. IEEE, 2014, pp. 1–6.

B. Brogni, C. Avizzano, C. Evangelista, and M. Bergamasco, “Technological approach for cultural heritage: augmented reality,†in 8th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interaction. RO-MAN’99 (Cat. No. 99TH8483). IEEE, 1999, pp. 206–212.

E. Costanza, A. Kunz, and M. Fjeld, “Mixed reality: A survey,†in Human machine interaction. Springer, 2009, pp. 47–68.

M. Speicher, B. D. Hall, and M. Nebeling, “What is mixed reality?†in Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019, pp. 1–15.

M. Carrozzino and M. Bergamasco, “Beyond virtual museums: Experiencing immersive virtual reality in real museums,†Journal of Cultural Heritage, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 452–458, 2010.

M. S. B. A. Ghani and S. N. B. W. Shamsuddin, “A systematic literature review: User experience (ux) elements in digital application for virtual museum,†International Journal, vol. 9, no. 3, 2020.

L. Errichiello, R. Micera, M. Atzeni, and G. Del Chiappa, “Exploring the implications of wearable virtual reality technology for museum visitors’ experience: A cluster analysis,†International Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 590–605, 2019.

M. Shehade and T. Stylianou-Lambert, “Virtual reality in museums: Exploring the experiences of museum professionals,†Applied Sciences, vol. 10, no. 11, p. 4031, 2020.

A. Sugiura, T. Kitama, M. Toyoura, and X. Mao, “The use of augmented reality technology in medical specimen museum tours,†Anatomical sciences education, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 561–571, 2019.

M. K. Bekele, R. Pierdicca, E. Frontoni, E. S. Malinverni, and J. Gain, “A survey of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality for cultural heritage,†Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1–36, 2018.

N. F. M. N. Shah and M. Ghazali, “A systematic review on digital technology for enhancing user experience in museums,†in International Conference on User Science and Engineering. Springer, 2018, pp. 35–46.

G. Efstratios, T. Michael, B. Stephanie, L. Athanasios, Z. Paul, and P. George, “New cross/augmented reality experiences for the virtual museums of the future,†in Euro-Mediterranean Conference. Springer, 2018, pp. 518–527.

J. Kidd and E. N. McAvoy, “Immersive experiences in museums, galleries and heritage sites: a review of research findings and issues,â€

Cardiff: School of Journalism, Media and Culture, 2019.

S. Pescarin, “Museums and virtual museums in europe: reaching expectations,†SCIRES-IT-SCIentific RESearch and Information Technology, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 131–140, 2014.

A. Liberati, D. G. Altman, J. Tetzlaff, C. Mulrow, P. C. Gøtzsche, J. P. Ioannidis, M. Clarke, P. J. Devereaux, J. Kleijnen, and D. Moher, “The prisma statement for reporting systematic reviews and metaanalyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: explanation and elaboration,†Journal of clinical epidemiology, vol. 62, no. 10, pp. e1–e34, 2009.

V. Komianos, “Virtual, augmented and mixed reality applications in museums: Protocol for a systematic review,†Mar 2021. [Online]. Available: osf.io/kzxap

“Scopus database,†https://www.scopus.com/, accessed: 2021-05-22.

“Acm digital library,†https://dl.acm.org/, accessed: 2021-05-22.

“Ieee,†https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/, accessed: 2021-05-22.

F. Z. Kaghat, A. Azough, M. Fakhour, and M. Meknassi, “A new audio augmented reality interaction and adaptation model for museum visits,†Computers & Electrical Engineering, vol. 84, p. 106606, 2020.

A. Poce, F. Amenduni, C. De Medio, M. Valente, and M. R. Re, “Adopting augmented reality to engage higher education students in a museum university collection: the experience at Roma tre university,†Information, vol. 10, no. 12, p. 373, 2019.

R. Hammady, M. Ma, and C. Strathearn, “Ambient information visualisation and visitors’ technology acceptance of mixed reality in museums,†Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1–22, 2020.

J. Yang and G. Soros, “Audio-augmented museum experiences using wearable visual-inertial odometry,†in Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, 2019, pp. 1–6.

Y. H. Lin, S. H. Chang, T. C. Huang, Y. T. Lin, and Y. J. Chen, “Augmented reality enhanced ubiquitous-learning in museum,†International Journal of Information and Education Technology, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 543–547, 2019.

Z. Abbas, W. Chao, C. Park, V. Soni, and S. H. Hong, “Augmented reality-based real-time accurate artifact management system for museums,†PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 136–150, 2019.

P. Kyriakou and S. Hermon, “Can i touch this? using natural interaction in a museum augmented reality system,†Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, vol. 12, p. e00088, 2019.

W. Zhao, D. Stevenson, H. Gardner, and M. Adcock, “Dealing with clutter in augmented museum environments,†in The 17th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry, 2019, pp. 1–9.

R. Hammady, M. Ma, C. Strathern, and M. Mohamad, “Design and development of a spatial mixed reality touring guide to the Egyptian museum,†Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 3465–3494, 2020.

T. Krzywinska, T. Phillips, A. Parker, and M. J. Scott, “From immersion’s bleeding edge to the augmented telegrapher: A method for creating mixed reality games for museum and heritage contexts,†Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1–20, 2020.