Towards a Dynamic and Extensible Middleware for Enhancing Exhibits

Exhibit sites, such as museums and commercial conventions, do not usually allow or motivate visitor interaction with the exhibited items. In this work we present an architecture for providing an augmented experience for exhibits. In our concept, visitors can use wireless handheld devices to scan the identifiers (e.g. RFID tags, 2D barcodes) of exhibit items and receive information about them or trigger events in the surrounding environment. We present a generic middleware which is dynamic, extensible and configurable, and is capable of generating different responses to visitor interactions. Responses can consider the visitor's profile, the exhibit's or visitor's history, administrative preferences, and other information. They include sending events to the visitor's device or to devices surrounding the exhibit. The architecture hides development complexity and takes advantage of various technologies, integrating them into our middleware and our handset application. We also provide administration capabilities, such as reporting and exhibit configuration. Our concept has been implemented and validated in a museum scenario and uses multiple technologies for communication, unique exhibit identification, and software dynamicity and extensibility.