An IoT-based Smart Museum for a new interactive cultural experience

Art and culture have always played an important role in human beings lives. Over the centuries, hundred of museums and art galleries have preserved our diverse cultural heritage and served as important sources of education and learning. Museums are nowadays a tool of entertainment such as theatres or cinemas. Today, museums and art galleries usually provide visitors either with paper booklets or with audio guides. Visits at museums are often considered boring, because it is hard for museums curators to catch the attention of tourists. In particular, it is difficult to define in advance a tour for all the visitors, because interests may vary from person to person. Interests are different from children to adults, students group from single visitor, casual visitor to fond-visitor. Interactive and personalized museum tours need to be developed. In this perspective, a significant contribution can be given by the next Internet of Things (IoT), which involves the extension of the Internet to small and low-cost “things” that are thought to realize smart environments in order to provide new services to the users. IoT aims to create a better world for people, where smart objects around us know what we like, what we want and act accordingly without explicit gestures [1]. Taking into account all these considerations, we have developed a system able to address all the above- described issues. This work is partially supported by the research project “PON04a2_D - DICET LivingLab Di Cultura e Tecnologia – INMOTO – OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A.”, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). More in detail, the solution developed enables wearable devices, interacting with an IoT- based smart environment, to act as museum guides, providing a real interactive cultural experience