Panoramic Navigator at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany

Last month I visited a really good museum called the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The ZKM is quality, a really interesting place to visit should you ever happen to be anywhere near it!

PANORAMIC NAVIGATOR:

 

One thing in particular though that I saw there was the 'Panoramic Navigator'. Built in the late 90's, it's an interesting installation which uses an AR based system to navigate around the main hall of the ZKM, and display relevant information on different areas to users. It's quite a simple setup and idea really:

• The user holds onto a big metal pole, which has a touch screen attached.
• By spinning the pole around, the user also spins a camera attached to the top of the pole.
• Above the pole is also a panoramic view of the ZKM's main hall, which by spinning the pole the user directs the camera to look at different areas of.
• These images are relayed from the camera to the screen, on which certain areas form the image are able to be touched to reveal information about that particular area of the museum.

The pictures below should help to explain this a little more clearly:

 

 

It's quite different from what I'm envisaging for my AR navigation system for the NSC, but one thing that's definitely worth noting is that even way back in 1997, this Panoramic Navigator was using a touch screen interface. This really sends the message home to me that I need to plough forward with my plan of using markers printed in the guidebook as buttons (which could be thought of as their own 'paper' touch screen interface), because for me, 13 years on, the idea of using a mouse and keyboard as input devices really should be obsolete. So let's hope I can pull off the 'markers as buttons' idea!