An Augmented Reality exhibition guide for the iPhone

Handheld Augmented Reality (AR) can enable intuitive browsing and annotation of objects in an exhibition through the visitors' in-hand mobile devices. Several researchers explored Handheld AR technologies in museums and exhibition-like environments. However, despite the proliferation of smart phones that can act as magic lenses for augmented objects, AR technologies are not widely adopted in exhibitions. This paper investigates the possible techniques to build a reliable, scalable and cost effective solution for an indoor marker based exhibition guide on the iPhone. After reviewing possible tracking technologies, available open source marker based tracking toolkits on the iPhone are explored. The paper concludes with a proposed design for dynamic content creation to augment and annotate exhibition objects.