In today’s fast-paced world, museum visitors are often faced with the challenge of navigating large, complex spaces. To improve this experience and provide a seamless journey through the Chennai Egmore Museum, we’ve developed a cutting-edge AR (Augmented Reality) navigation app. This blog post takes you through the details of our app, how it enhances the museum experience, the technology behind it, and the steps we took to bring it to life.
Museums are cultural treasure troves, but they can sometimes be difficult to navigate, especially for first-time visitors or those unfamiliar with the layout. Traditional static maps and signage are limited and may not provide enough guidance. AR navigation solves this by offering an interactive and immersive way to explore the exhibits.
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The Chennai Egmore Museum is home to some of the most significant art collections in India. However, the building's complex layout, with diverse galleries, posed a challenge for effective navigation. Our goal was to create an app that could guide visitors efficiently, allowing them to:
Our app leverages Augmented Reality to create a user-friendly, interactive map of the museum. Here’s how it works:
Building an AR navigation app involves several layers of technology and integration. Below are the key components and technical steps involved in the development of this app:
For an immersive AR experience, we used ARKit (for iOS) and ARCore (for Android) as the primary AR frameworks. These frameworks allow for real-time object detection, environmental understanding, and spatial positioning, which are crucial for providing accurate and interactive navigation.
Instead of relying on pre-existing 3D models or Floor plans, we developed a custom AR measurement tool specifically designed for this project. This tool enabled us to directly capture the real-world dimensions of the museum space and accurately map the layout without traditional architectural resources.
After capturing the measurements and layout data, we translated this information into a 3D model of the museum using Unity and the ProBuilder tool.
ProBuilder tool by Unity
One of the most engaging features of the app is the spatial AR floating window, which appears when the user reaches a target exhibit. This dynamic window provides rich, interactive content related to the artwork, giving users more information about the exhibit in a way that integrates seamlessly into their surroundings.
One of the biggest challenges in the development process was designing an efficient and responsive pathfinding algorithm. We needed to ensure that users could be guided smoothly through the museum, without getting lost or having their paths interrupted.
The app is integrated with a backend system that provides real-time data about exhibits, galleries, and museum events. This allows the app to update in real time based on changes in the museum layout or schedules.
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Backend Technologies: We used Node.js with Express.js for building a robust backend API, handling data such as exhibit descriptions, schedules, and other dynamic content.
Database: MongoDB served as the database to store exhibit information, user preferences, and historical data on art pieces.
Syncing with Museum Database: To ensure data accuracy, the app regularly syncs with the museum's existing CMS (Content Management System), allowing the team to update exhibit information without needing to release an app update.
The design of the app needed to be intuitive, clean, and easy to navigate, especially in a museum setting where users may have limited time to learn how to use the app.
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Testing AR-based apps can be tricky, especially in environments with varied lighting and spatial challenges. To ensure that the app provided accurate AR navigation, we conducted extensive testing in the museum itself.
This AR navigation app is just the beginning of how technology can transform the museum-going experience. In the future, we envision adding features such as:
Our AR navigation app reimagines the way visitors experience the Chennai Egmore Museum. With the power of augmented reality, we’ve created a more interactive, informative, and user-friendly way to explore this cultural gem. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a seasoned art lover, the app is designed to enhance your journey and deepen your understanding of the artwork on display.
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Read about the AR-powered navigation we developed for Chennai Egmore Museum: A Step into the Future of Museum Exploration.
Navigating large and complex spaces can often be a challenge, whether you’re in a museum, shopping mall, or an unfamiliar city. Traditional maps, static signboards, and even digital directories can sometimes be overwhelming or difficult to use. But what if you could simply hold up your smartphone and see real-time, interactive directions overlaid onto the real world? That’s exactly what AR Navigation (Augmented Reality Navigation) offers.
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Augmented Reality (AR) Navigation is a technology that enhances real-world navigation by overlaying digital directions, markers, and interactive elements onto your surroundings. Instead of relying on traditional 2D maps, AR navigation provides step-by-step, real-time guidance through an intuitive, immersive experience.
Using your smartphone or AR glasses, you can follow virtual arrows, floating labels, or even animated paths directly on your screen, helping you navigate effortlessly. Whether you’re exploring a museum, finding your way in an airport, or locating a store in a shopping mall, AR navigation brings real-world spaces to life with digital enhancements.
AR Navigation transforms multiple industries by providing real-time, immersive, and intuitive wayfinding solutions. Here’s how it is being used across various sectors:
Navigating large museums and exhibitions can be challenging, especially for first-time visitors. With AR navigation, users simply scan a QR code at the entrance, instantly unlocking a digital map of the museum. Instead of relying on static signboards or printed guides, visitors can:
For example, at an art gallery, visitors can select a painting from the app, follow the AR-guided path, and upon arrival, see a 3D floating information window displaying details about the artist, painting techniques, and cultural significance.
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Large shopping malls often have multiple floors, interconnected sections, and complex layouts, making it difficult for shoppers to find specific stores, restaurants, or services. AR navigation solves this by:
For example, a department store can integrate AR navigation so that customers searching for “men’s clothing” are guided to the correct floor and aisle, reducing frustration and enhancing the shopping experience.
Airports are often large, crowded, and confusing, especially for travelers with tight layovers or first-time visitors. Missing a flight due to poor navigation can be stressful, but AR navigation makes airport travel easier by:
For example, a traveler arriving at a busy international airport can use AR navigation to:
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Exploring a new city can be overwhelming, especially when dealing with unfamiliar roads, landmarks, and public transport options. AR navigation turns your smartphone into a personal tour guide, offering:
For example, a traveler in Paris can use AR navigation to walk from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre Museum, following an AR-guided path while receiving historical insights and recommendations for nearby cafés along the way.
1. Interactive & Immersive Experience
AR navigation provides real-time, step-by-step guidance with virtual paths, arrows, and floating labels overlaid onto the real world, making wayfinding more engaging than static maps or signboards.
2. No More Getting Lost in Large Spaces
Unlike traditional navigation tools, AR navigation visually guides users with real-world overlays, ensuring they reach their destination without confusion. It dynamically adjusts paths based on the user’s location and surroundings.
3. Real-time and Personalized Navigation
AR navigation customizes routes based on user preferences, reroutes in case of obstacles, and provides live updates if an exhibit moves or a store relocates, ensuring a seamless experience.
4. Enhanced Accessibility
With features like multilingual support, voice-guided directions, and interactive elements, AR navigation makes wayfinding easier for people with disabilities, tourists, and those unfamiliar with the space.
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5. Time-Saving and Efficient
By eliminating guesswork, reducing reliance on staff, and providing direct routes, AR navigation ensures users reach their destination quickly without wasting time.
6. Seamless Integration with Smart Technology
AR navigation works with smartphones, AR glasses, and wearables, and with advancements in 5G and AI, it is becoming even more responsive and immersive.
Compared to traditional maps, signboards, or GPS apps, AR navigation offers a more intuitive, efficient, and engaging way to explore and interact with physical spaces.
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Many traditional navigation techniques struggle indoors due to signal interference, lack of accuracy, and multi-floor challenges. GPS-based navigation, effective outdoors, fails inside buildings due to signal obstruction by walls and ceilings, leading to poor floor differentiation. Magnetic compasses and IMU (Inertial Measurement Units) suffer from drift errors and interference from metallic structures, causing unreliable positioning.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-based positioning improve indoor tracking but struggle with vertical positioning, making it hard to determine a user's exact floor. Elevators and staircases further complicate tracking. Traditional methods fail to dynamically map obstacles, walls, and different building levels. Unlike SLAM, LiDAR, and AR-based techniques, which create real-time 3D maps and track user movement across floors, existing methods lack precision for seamless multi-floor indoor navigation.
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To establish AR navigation, multiple techniques can be combined for optimal performance. Visual tracking and SLAM enable real-time mapping, positioning, and obstacle detection using the device’s camera and sensors. Pathfinding algorithms like A* or Dijkstra’s optimize routes and update them dynamically.
‍Sensor fusion (accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera) improves accuracy in GPS-limited environments, while LIDAR and depth sensors create precise 3D maps. Unity, AR Foundation, and third-party SDKs like Vuforia enable seamless integration of these technologies, offering a flexible, cross-platform solution for indoor and outdoor AR navigation.
We used multiple technologies for an immersive AR experience, ARKit (iOS) and ARCore (Android) were used for real-time object detection, environmental understanding, and spatial positioning, enabling accurate and interactive navigation. To map the indoor layout without traditional floor plans, a custom AR measurement tool was developed, utilizing a marker-based approach to capture real-world dimensions, measure distances between markers, and create precise spatial data. This tool, overlaid on the camera’s live feed, recorded measurements in real time.
The collected data was then used to build a 3D model in Unity with ProBuilder, ensuring a detailed and interactive representation of the indoor environment , including floors, walls, and exhibit spaces. Navigation was powered by an A* pathfinding algorithm, which calculated the shortest routes, dynamically adjusted for obstacles like crowded areas or closed exhibits, and ensured seamless movement through the environment.
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We leveraged Unity and AR Foundation to develop a versatile AR navigation system with cross-platform support. Unity’s powerful real-time rendering and 3D environment handling made it ideal for creating immersive AR experiences. Using AR Foundation, we seamlessly integrated ARCore (Android) and ARKit (iOS), allowing efficient development without platform-specific coding.
AR Foundation provided essential features like plane detection, tracking, and environment mapping, crucial for real-time AR navigation. We implemented pathfinding algorithms and integrated external APIs (e.g., GPS, Bluetooth) to enhance accuracy and scalability for both indoor and outdoor navigation. Unity’s extensive toolset and asset store further streamlined development, enabling us to create a dynamic, interactive, and responsive AR navigation system.
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Each technique serves different needs, from simple indoor spaces to complex environments, and can be used alone or combined for better AR navigation accuracy.
Place AR markers at key points (e.g., corners) to collect spatial data. The positions of these markers are tracked and used to create a 3D model of the indoor space.
Detects flat surfaces like floors and walls using the camera and sensors. This creates a basic map of the environment, allowing for the placement of AR objects and navigation markers.
Uses the camera and sensors to simultaneously map the environment and track the device’s position. It provides real-time updates as the user moves, creating dynamic, detailed maps.
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Uses depth sensors to capture 3D point clouds or meshes of the environment, providing a highly detailed map. Ideal for large or complex spaces.
Place Bluetooth beacons around the indoor space to track the user’s location based on signal strength. Useful in environments with poor GPS or visual tracking.
Uses Wi-Fi signals to triangulate the user’s position, helping map indoor spaces where other tracking methods are limited.
AR navigation is transforming the way we explore spaces by providing real-time, immersive guidance through digital overlays. Unlike traditional maps, it enhances accessibility, efficiency, and engagement across various industries, from museums to smart cities. By leveraging technologies like SLAM, depth sensing, and AI-driven pathfinding, AR navigation overcomes indoor tracking challenges, offering precise wayfinding solutions. With Unity and AR Foundation, developers can create seamless, cross-platform experiences for smartphones and AR wearables. As AR continues to evolve with AI and 5G, navigation is becoming more intuitive, making it easier than ever to explore the world around us.
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Summary of AR navigation technique and its use cases
‍The Future of AI in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Applications
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When Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) themselves are novel concepts for many, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is simply going to revolutionize the way humans communicate with digital environments. With heightened sensory immersion, AI-powered AR and VR applications can simply transform industries and change the way we have been working with it - anywhere from healthcare to education to gaming or manufacturing.Â
This blog is intended to discuss —the phenomenon that may arise with the inclusion of AI into AR/VR and emerging possibilities.
The Convergence of AI with AR and VR enables systems to analyze and respond to real-world inputs sensitively, creating dynamic and interactive user experiences.
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To cite some real-world examples:Â
In healthcare, The AccuVein AR tool, used in healthcare, employs AI to analyze and overlay vein locations on a patient's skin for easier and more accurate injections or IV placements.
Similarly in industrial maintenance, Bosch’s Common Augmented Reality Platform (CAP) uses AI to recognize machine parts and overlay step-by-step repair instructions, streamlining maintenance tasks for industrial workers.
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AR and VR technologies with the joined force of AI are transforming numerous industries:
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The contribution that AI-driven AR and VR applications can make in medical training, diagnostics, and treatment is immense:
AI-powered AR and VR have the potential to completely redefine educational experiences:
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In industrial settings, productivity and safety are where AI-powered AR & VR can contribute considerably:
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AI-integrated AR and VR can redefine consumer shopping experiences:
The entertainment industry benefits much from the advent of AI in AR and VR:
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AR and VR at TECHJAYS
How TechJays uses Unity Engine to develop Immersive VR Experience for Meta Quest
At TechJays, we're excited to share how our expertise in Unity Engine and Meta Quest VR headsets allows us to create impactful and immersive VR solutions. As we dive into the technical aspects of our work, we'll highlight how we use Unity Engine to build interactive and realistic VR experiences, demonstrating our skill set and approach.
Why Unity Engine for VR Development?
Unity Engine is a powerful tool for VR development due to its versatility and extensive feature set. For Meta Quest VR headsets, Unity provides a robust platform that supports high-performance rendering, intuitive interaction design, and seamless integration with VR hardware. We use Unity Engine to deliver top-notch VR solutions:
1. Creating Realistic Interactions
Realistic interactions are fundamental to a convincing VR experience. We leverage Unity’s physics engine to simulate natural interactions between users and virtual objects.
2. Developing Aesthetic Environments
Visually good-looking environments are crucial for engaging VR experiences. Unity’s tools help us create quality environments that react to user actions in real time.
3. Implementing User Interfaces
Effective user interfaces (UIs) in VR need to be intuitive and easy to navigate. Unity provides several tools to build and optimize VR UIs.
4. Optimizing Performance
Performance optimization is critical for delivering a smooth experience on VR headsets. Consistent frame rates are crucial in VR to avoid motion sickness. Unity provides several techniques to optimize the performance for better VR experiences.
We launched our first VR application to Meta Store: an interactive walkthrough of a VR environment allowing the user to explore a virtual environment with complete freedom and interaction.
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The app was made using the Unity game engine with Meta XR SDK for Meta Quest headsets.
The app lets you explore a few immersive office interior environments in different daylight cycles by navigating the virtual space using intuitive controls like teleportation, movement, and snap rotation. The experience is further enhanced by specific interactive features, like playing video, grabbing objects, and pulling objects to hand.
Find it at the Meta Store Link: https://www.meta.com/experiences/techjays-office-tour/8439123209473841/
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AR at TechJays: Transforming Experiences with Augmented Reality
At TechJays, we are committed to harnessing the power of Augmented Reality (AR) to craft interactive and innovative experiences across various industries. By leveraging advanced AR development tools such as Unity Engine and plugins such as Unity AR Foundation, ARCore, ARKit, and Vuforia, we create impactful AR applications that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds. These state-of-the-art technologies allow us to deliver precise, immersive AR experiences, enabling our clients to engage with dynamic, real-time interactions in both indoor and outdoor environments.
The confluence of AI into AR and VR is launching digital experiences into an era of unparalleled innovation. AI algorithms, computational hardware, and seamless connectivity will accelerate the adoption of these technologies across various industries. As we stand on the brink of this transformation, we at TechJays are committed to using our Unity Engine expertise to deliver high-quality VR solutions tailored to your needs. Our technical proficiency, combined with our understanding of Meta Quest VR capabilities, allows us to create immersive and effective VR experiences.
Get in Touch
If you’re interested in exploring how our VR development skills can benefit your business, contact TechJays today. We’re here to help you leverage the power of VR to achieve your goals and elevate your operations.Â
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When Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) themselves are novel concepts for many, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is simply going to revolutionize the way humans communicate with digital environments.