3D Positioning for Museums

Press Release /

Fraunhofer IIS will be presenting the awiloc® technology at the MUTEC trade fair in Leipzig from November 22 – 24, hall 2 (booth H30). Convenient pocket size, easy handling: Multimedia guides with awiloc® positioning offer museum visitors behind-the-scenes insight – right there, wherever they are. Just like having a personal guide to show you around. Where typical positioning systems such as GPS run up against their limits when used indoors, awiloc® can determine locations with a level of precision down to a few meters to offer multimedia content exactly where you need it.

© Fraunhofer IIS
Offering a stimulating array of additional information and the awiloc® positioning technology, modern multimedia guides take visitors on a tour through the museum.

Visitors no longer have to battle their way through weighty guide books but are provided with a thoughtful and layered multimedia content for the artwork on display. What’s the story of that sculpture? What was life like in historic settlements? To bring art, history and technology to life, the museums and application developers are in-creasingly turning to awiloc®, the Wireless LAN 3D positioning technology by the Fraun­­hofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS.

Searching for numbers and keys is history

awiloc® makes the cumbersome process with conventional audio guides, where numbers must be located and entered on a keypad, a thing of the past. Mobile devices like smartphones automatically identify the visitor’s location in the museum, promoting the relevant information to nearby works of art. The guests have the possibility to engage and explore broadly and deeply as they go through an exhibition. awiloc® was reviewed for compliance with the data protection law, allows 3D positioning with a level of precision down to a few meters, and is a purely software-based solution that can be easily integrated into mobile museum guide systems.

Fruitful partnership

Numerous museums and application developers already use awiloc® to provide direct access to the background information on individual exhibits via multimedia guides. awiloc® is being used at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, the Baden Wuerttemberg History Museum, and the Museum for Industrial Culture in Nuremberg. Further projects with museums in London, Munich and Vienna are underway.

Fraunhofer IIS cooperates closely with experienced global providers of multimedia guides like NOUS Wissensmanagement (Vienna), InformationsGesellschaft / xpedeo (Bremen) or Antenna International™ (Berlin).