Augmented Reality Heritage

Augmented Reality Heritage is an immersive application that allows you to view, from your smartphone and in Augmented Reality, digital information associated with a Point of Interest. We have developed this application for the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and it is currently being used in two Tourism Degree subjects and the ICT and Tourism Master, which represents a total of more than 200 student users. The app is available for Android and iOS, so you can download it from Google Play and App Store. The app is in English (Augmented Reality Heritage) and Catalan (Patrimoni Realitat Augmentada).

It consists of an application that allows viewing in Augmented Reality or Map Mode different points of interest associated with geographic coordinates and in which digital resources can be included that enrich the user experience. The Points of Interest are created by the university students themselves, and this is very interesting, because while students learn this new way of understanding and promoting tourism, we can all enrich ourselves with the knowledge and routes that they are generating.

USER EXPERIENCE 

POINTS OF INTEREST CREATION

The app works together with the Hoppala webapp, a platform where students register Points of Interest (POI).

What is a POI?

From the English acronym Point Of Interest, a POI is a digital information set associated with geographic coordinates.

Students can create layers (a layer is a set of POIs). For example, they can create a “Modernist Barcelona” layer that includes the Museu del modernisme de Barcelona, ​​Casa Batlló and Palau de la Música Catalana as POIs.

As we said, students can associate resources to these POIs that enrich both their learning and the final Augmented Reality experience.

Resource Gallery

POI DISPLAY MODES

The Application allows you to locate these POIs from your mobile and explore their content in two modes: RA mode and map mode.

Augmented Reality mode

Once the layers have been created, they can be viewed in Augmented Reality through the app. In AR view mode you explore POIs through the your mobile device camera. To locate the POIs, scan around you with your smartphone: if you have any POI less than 1km away, it will be shown on your screen with the marker icon.

Continuing with the “modernist Barcelona” example, if you are in Plaça Catalunya and point your smartphone camera at it, Casa Batlló, the Barcelona Modernist Museum and the Palau de la Música will appear on the radar. You can walk to Casa Batlló frontage and, pointing your phone, you will access the digital resources that the student has added to this POI to enrich the experience, for example a documentary about Antoni Gaudí or a virtual guided tour inside the building.

Map Mode

The teacher can view the work done by the student. For this, the app includes a location simulator in which any user can click on “map mode” and move to another location: for example, if you are in Barcelona you can go to map mode and click on Sevilla. Your device will simulate that you are in Sevilla and you will be able to see the points of interest located there through your AR device.

Mode “use map location”.

This is an even more complete application modality. Simulate in Virtual Reality mode the location to which you have moved using the map mode. In other words, if you are in Barcelona and have traveled to Seville, you can activate this modality and see the points of interest located there through your device in Augmented Reality. Being in Passeig de Gràcia you could be seeing on the screen a simulation that you are visiting the Giralda in Sevilla. You will enjoy a tourist route anywhere in the world from the place where you are!

Why immersive learning? 

Heritage Augmented Reality is an example of the many educational activities that are made possible thanks to Augmented Reality. Virtual and Augmented Reality allow us to generate unforgettable experiences for students because they make them take a proactive role in their own learning. In addition, immersive technologies increase the learning quality and effectiveness because they are based on Active Learning and intensify the user’s emotions. This means that we see engagement multiplied x2 and content retention multiplied even x4, compared to learning with traditional methods. Working with immersive learning reduces learning time and simplifies logistics because it allows the teacher to monitor the work that their students are doing from their device, thus becoming their best educational guide.

If you are interested in this new way of understanding education, contact our team. We will be happy to listen to your needs and share our challenges!