Virtual museum guide

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research have developed a computer system to recognize images in a museum and enhance them with digital information, and have deployed such a system in Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum.  When visitors point a flat-screen computer’s digital camera at an image in the exhibition (for example, an image of the Roman Forum, the Temple of Saturn, or the Colosseum), the system overlays the scene with ancillary information, including a possible reconstruction of ruins.   Such a technology is called “augmented reality,” and it may become available to tourists via smart phones.