"Sber" developed an AR excursion for the Polytechnic Museum

2021: AR tour development

ARVR Sber/Lab, in cooperation Polytechnic Museum with, created a tour in the format (AR augmented reality), which will allow users to be the first to find out what the updated museum will be. The project guide was the symbol of the museum - robot the exporter Sepulka, created in 1962. This Sber was announced on September 7, 2021.

AR visitors will be able to see where after the opening of the museum there will be historical and scientific parts of the permanent exposition, research laboratories, the Dvor Children's Science Museum, the Big Audience and the Atrium for public events, temporary exhibition zones and the Polytechnic Library.

A tour of the updated museum is available to all users of the Polytechnic mobile application on the iOS platform. To view the excursion, it is enough to put a smartphone camera on the facade of the museum, and a Sepulka robot guide, stylized as pixel graphics, will appear on the screen. Sepulka's figure is surrounded by pictograms symbolizing the main zones of the future museum space. Clicking on any of them, users will be able to get acquainted with each of the sections of the Polytechnic in more detail.

And for those who cannot come to the museum and participate in an unusual excursion, another format of acquaintance with the future spaces of the Polytechnic is provided. To do this, the application will simply need to open the section "Excursion with the Sepulka robot" and hear a story about the museum.

The main feature of the development is that the graphics appear directly above the museum building, given its architecture. This was made possible thanks to the Visual Positioning System (VPS), developed in Sber AR/VR Lab, which determines the user's position and direction of view with high accuracy, which allows you to place augmented reality where the idea of ​ ​ the application requires it. A special neural network on the user's device scans special points from the camera's video stream, and the Sber cloud service matches the points with a digital impression and determines the user's position.

The accuracy of localization allows artists to realize their boldest ideas. After all, any of their projects will be placed on locations with the highest accuracy, exactly as the author originally intended. This technology was created by the developers of our Laboratory. I am sure that it will be widely in demand by other cultural institutions, "said Maxim Kozlov, Head of Sber AR/VR Lab.

The launch of the mobile application together with Sber AR/VR Lab is one of the key events of 2021 for the Polytechnic. While repair and restoration work is underway in the historical building, it will be another way to stay in touch with the audience and introduce it to the rich life of the museum in an accessible format, "said Elizaveta Berkovich, Director of Development of the Polytechnic Museum.