The next time you visit a museum, your experience could be very different from what you expect. Technology has transformed the way we interact today, and some of the world’s biggest museums are experimenting with augmented reality to connect with the tech-savvy generation, to offer them a multi-sensory experience.

The Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore has a new iPhone app combining augmented reality and location-based gaming for its Terracotta Warriors exhibition. iPhone users can watch the museum exhibits come to life on their phone screen, engaging them in a more interesting way.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City uses a free app called Explorer with free devices to demonstrate it. This app helps navigate the museum, acting as a personal guide for a custom tour, letting you choose the exhibits you want to see. The app also steers you in the right direction, enhancing the experience and providing information about each exhibit.

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, media artists used augmented reality to create a show for the Conflux festival in October 2010. They used Layar, the augmented reality browser in a smartphone, to show visitors the museum’s galleries via the phone’s camera. The GPS and internet connection projected the virtual art on the camera’s image.

In Australia, the Powerhouse Museum has an augmented reality mobile app which pulls images from the museum’s Flickr archive and shows them through the Layar browser.

Apps combining augmented reality are poised to revolutionise visits to the museum in a futuristic way. The apps being experimented show how augmented reality can add a new dimension to audio guides. The visitor can see the original artist standing beside their creation and talking about it.  An example is artist Jan Rothuizen who had an augmented reality exhibition of his work at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

It is not just museums that are embracing augmented reality. Other cultural institutions use augmented reality to integrate digital content with the real world. With the Museum of London’s iPhone app, users can see the museum’s collection of archived photography on their phones based on their location and orientation.

One of the most interesting augmented reality museum apps is the one at The Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam which offers two versions of its tours, a real one and the second via an augmented reality app, using 3D augmented reality and Layar technology that describes the history about the various monuments in the city. It uses images, audio and other information and shows 3D models of future buildings and shows what they may look like in the future. Users found that while the human guide was attentive, the augmented reality app could provide more information, offering more flexibility according to the visitor’s individual preference.

According to ABI Research, about 6 million augmented reality apps were downloaded last year. This number is expected to reach 19 million downloads this year and about a billion by 2016.  It will be exciting to watch future trends and see how augmented reality enthralls museum visitors, while enabling museums present them with an unforgettable experience.

If you browse the topic “augmented reality” at, say, the iTunes App store, you will find a majority of the results relate to the travel and tourism industry.  A likely reason for this is the increasing number of smartphones, tablets and other intelligent handheld devices. These devices do away with the need to carry travel guide books, maps and phone numbers, as these are now bundled into a neat little app that can be conveniently carried wherever the traveller wants to go.

Augmented reality is technology that offers the traveller a lot of real time information at her fingertips at little or no cost. Augmented reality helps you superimpose the digital world on the real world via the camera’s view, helping you see data about cafes, restaurants, hotels, shop offers, menu translations and landmark locations, to name just a few. Augmented reality is not only practical, but also opens up a whole new world around the traveller. It makes a great companion that helps find places and attractions that one might otherwise miss. It is primarily a means for finding travel information. Augmented reality leverages the smartphone’s GPS, high resolution camera, compass, gyroscope and accelerometer to locate your orientation and feed you relevant information.

Popular augmented reality apps in tourism and travel

Among the big brands that have explored and adopted augmented reality is Lonely Planet, a trusted travel guide, which has over 25 Compass Guides. By holding up the mobile phone in front of you, you can receive info on your screen, superimposed on the visual via the camera lens in the real world. You can then choose the category you want from hotels, restaurants and sights based on your relative location from the place with the actual distance. Yelp and TripAdvisor also have their own augmented reality apps.

Among the top ten augmented reality tourism and travel apps are mTrip, Layar, Junaio and Wikitude which present data from third party sources. Here s an overview of some of these augmented reality apps:

• A free AR app from Layar gives you layers of real world information on your phone screen in relation to your current location. Let us say you are in Greece. You can use Layar to browse the history of Greece, find your way to the nearest train station, museum or restaurant or bank, all with the help of virtual signs.
• mTrip is a city travel guide augmented reality app that shows hundreds of features for over 28 destinations. It also has offline navigation and can create custom itineraries that do not need an internet connection. Users find it somewhat cluttered and limited beyond city limits.
• TripAdvisor’s travel app has an augmented reality feature called Live View which filters through hotels, restaurants and other interesting sights. Users can see hotel ratings and contact info with street view with just one click.
• Wikitude locates restaurants, shops and other sights using third party content from Starbucks, YouTube, Gowalla and Foursquare with photos and videos of the location. It lets the user narrow down results with a search tab.

On the flip side, many users prefer to stick with the Google Maps services that give them accurate directions without having to hold their smart phones in front of them all the time. Some augmented reality apps make it tough to adjust the distance range of locations. Users feel that augmented reality apps that can be pointed to a specific building and tell them what’s inside would be more useful.

As an emerging and exciting technology, while augmented reality has tremendous possibilities, it still has to develop because there is a huge area to be covered out there. There is much to look forward to!

Apps rule in mobile marketing and considering that there are more than 5 billion mobile phones worldwide, it is not surprising that companies serious about mobile marketing are focusing on developing apps for their customers. Mobiles let companies reach their customers wherever they are. According to the September 2010 comScore report, 31.4% of mobile users downloaded apps.

The world’s largest automotive manufacturer, Volkswagen, recently introduced its “DAS” or Digital Auto Space app which is an interactive iPad app. DAS is a magazine that takes customers into the fascinating world of Volkswagen with stories, videos, 360 degree car views and other interactive features. Planned as a quarterly magazine, DAS will be available in five languages and is part of the auto giant’s digital marketing strategy aimed at engaging with their audience.

Volkswagen’s launch comes close on the heels of iPad apps launches from Mercedes-Benz and Audi. In fact, Hyundai, the Korean car manufacturer will offer its owner’s manual as an interactive iPad app.

Currently, Volkswagen is promoting the relaunch of their Golf Cabriolet with a world-first augmented reality app for the iPad2, iPhone and Android. This AR app is fun and lets you explore and play with the car as you would with a real car.  You can change the car’s colour, rotate the car and it also allows you to create a picture of you with the car which you can share across your social networks.

In March 2011, Volkswagen released a unique AR app for iPhones, the VW Test Drive a Print AD. This app lets users test drive cars across the print ads. Right now this is available only in the Norwegian Apple store and on VW’s website. The goal was to persuade drivers of the car’s benefits and what better way than to let them go for a drive? Augmented reality is a great way to provide a life-like experience and this ad was featured in Norway’s most popular print magazines. After downloading the app, users could position their phone over the print ad and check out the car’s various features while driving it and testing its impressive features like lane assist, adaptive lights and cruise control.
With its innovative apps Volkswagen aims to establish itself as a market leader. Brand-specific apps go a long way in promoting a brand and its products, helping with marketing and brand building.