Evolutionary augmented reality at the Natural History Museum

In this paper we describe the development of an augmented reality system designed to provide an exciting new way for the Natural History Museum in London to present evolutionary history to their visitors. The system uses a through-the-lens tracker and infrared LED markers to provide an unobtrusive and robust system that can operate for multiple users across a wide area.

1 Introduction

Museums are always looking for engaging ways of presenting content to visitors, and the use of multi- media presentations is one way of achieving this. As a part of its new £78M Darwin Centre that opened in September 2009, London's Natural History Museum incorporated a multimedia theatre, called the Attenborough Studio, named after the well-known BBC natural history presenter Sir David Attenborough. The museum staff worked with the BBC Natural History unit to develop content to show in the Studio.