Science Center ToGo

Nowadays Science Centers offer a fascinating bouquet of exhibits to their visitors. They provide hands on learning experience, delivering natural ways of active playful learning. Therefore, special exhibits are built, which usually demand extraordinary venues with proper spaces and adequate maintenance staff. The exhibits are often fairly complex and due to their prototypical character relatively expensive. Augmented Reality can add a whole new set of flexibility and possibilities to such installations, as indicated within the two projects CONNECT and EXPLOAR. Taking those possibilities to extreme, exhibits can be created for take away to deliver hands on Science Center experiences at hand. The first prototype of such a "Science Center ToGo" was a miniaturization of an airfoil exhibit originally installed at the science museum Explore-At-Bristol.

While the airfoil in its previous form was surely an interesting exhibit for a Science Center, it is not suitable for experiencing it at your own home due to its sheer size and the sophisticated hardware setup. The miniature version of the airfoil exhibit solves these problems and serves as the first Science Center ToGo prototype.

It consists of a small box that stores the model of an airplane wing. The wing is connected to an axle that fits into a hole of the box. The first physical prototype of the wing has been a print out of a virtual model, by using a 3D printer.

The software used for the MiniWing is implemented with the Morgan AR / VR Framework and it runs on typical desktop PCs or Ultra Mobile PCs. Via ordinary webcams and with the help of AR-Toolkit markers the software is able to track the miniature wing and instantly calculate the current angle of attack. All the user has to do is setup the wing as shown in the figures above, and run the software on an ordinary computer equipped with a webcam. The webcam stream is displayed on his computer screen and augmented by virtual representations of the airflow. The user can look at the MiniWing from different angles and experiment like with the original exhibit.

Currently we are developing the 3rd generation prototype of a ScienceCenter TOGO. It has been improved based on several evaluations within the EXPLOAR project.. . While improving the MiniWing exhibit, we are also developing additional prototypes showcasing other scientific phenomena.. Moreover, the development of a marker-less approach is planned for tracking features of the miniature exhibits. At the same time this would eliminate the need to put visually unattractive markers on the wing and the box itself, something that might distract the user.

From advances in modern cell phone technology and more people acquiring mobile devices such as PDAs or Ultra Mobile PCs, the Science Center ToGo approach will likely also benefit. Currently, the system is aimed at desktop based interaction, but mobile devices would theoretically provide an even more intriguing and intuitive method as this way one could utilize the magic lens metaphor to its full potential.