The Museum of the Future Links Us to the Past

The Durham Light Infantry Museum, one of the UK's many museums of war history, is struggling to stay afloat. Paramount to its survival is finding a way to engage a new generation of visitors who were raised on interactive computer technology, as well as giving previous guests a reason to return. Peter O'Hanlon, a software designer and Intel® Innovator, is tasked with doing just that. Since last November, he's been working on a project that leverages emerging tech, like 3D cameras and perceptual computing to create a more tactile and interactive experience. If successful, his innovations could save the DLI Museum. They could even find their way into other likeminded institutions across the UK, and perhaps the world, radically changing how we engage with our past.

Motherboard spoke with O'Hanlon about his ideas for a "museum of the future."

Motherboard: Can you tell me about your current project?

Peter O'Hanlon: I'm involved in a campaign to try and save a military museum here in the UK called the Durham Light Infantry Museum, which is local to where I live. One of the things that came out when talking to the trustees of the museum and the local council is there's very much a feeling that the way historical museums are handled now, and the way people interact with them, is very passé. So what we want to do is take a technological solution to get a generation of people with iPhones interested in the museum. We're creating what we like to call, "The Museum of the Future."

MB: What kinds of tech solutions do you have in mind?

POH: We're bringing in features like facial recognition. So when you're greeted at the desk where you sign in, we'll have facial recognition cameras to recognize you. We want it to be fairly discreet and hidden as much as possible, so you won't see the camera. It's not 100% perfect. We still have to sort out things, like if you have children there, we won't automatically recognize them if we haven't got permission.

But after we recognize you, we'll be able to say, "Wait a second, we've seen this person before. When you last came here, you missed this whole part of the museum" or "Since you last came, here we've added these exhibits." Maybe a re-enactor welcomes you back by name. So we can guide you, which will make it a much more personal experience.

As you go through the museum, there will be a camera situated in basically every display, seeing where you're going and what you're looking at. We can track them through the museum, so you can start to get an accurate count of user numbers and really start to drive out the big analysis, to see what's working, what's not, what we need to move around.

We'll have tablets around that will bring up relevant information, like little Wikipedias, where you can look at a soldier and how he got his Victorian Cross, in what conflict, in what battle. And you'll be able to take the database with you and have it mobile, so if I live 300 miles away, I can find out about the generals, battalions and formations, and see the battlegrounds.

MB: What kind of hardware are you using?

POH: I use a Intel® RealSense™ Camera. It's an infrared, HD camera that maps depth, as well as movements. It simulates what we do with our brain when we see things, and makes a 3D picture of the world around it. It can also track gesture recognition, where you can tap your finger or swipe your hand to use displays, like you see in Minority Report* or the Marvel* films.

We can use it for image extraction, to take a person out of films. We're looking at the idea of video walls, where you actually become part of the video footage. Imagine having footage taken in somewhere like Egypt in WWII, in the Battle of Alamein. We can put you into that scene. What you would get with green screens, we're now doing as live tech.

We think this is the kind of thing that will really appeal to people. And we can do things like get re-enactors to recreate scenes. Say you want to sign up for this particular brigade, we'll get the re-enactors to be the recruiters, so you can be in the scene and get that whole story of the people signing up.

I'm also looking at augmented reality. If you've got your augmented reality glasses on as you walk through a museum, you'll have a virtual narrator with you who knows where you are in the museum and can bring up relevant information. The problem is there's just not that much out there right now. There's also a battery life problem.

MB: What do you hope people will take away from this?

POH: For people to come away with more of an appreciation of the history. Since this is originally for a military museum, one thing I'd love to do is recreate some of the battlegrounds, using virtual reality to render the background and have simulations of the battles going on, actually putting people into the situation, so they get an appreciation. They're in there, feeling what the people who were actually involved in the conflict were feeling.

You'll have people screaming in your ear, guns going off. It takes the idea of what you'd get in a first person shooter. We can take a game engine and recreate these well documented areas. Then you'll have your virtual reality glasses on, and you're going to get a taste of the fear and adrenalin. We want that wow factor, for people to say, "Now I understand what that 19-year-old lad felt."

MB: Is there a danger of glorifying the violence?

POH: War is not a beautiful thing. But you have to remember and honor the bravery of the people who fought. Let's take the tech of first-person shooters and remove the glamor. You don't have the health packs. You don't have ammunition falling around your feet.

MB: What other features are you looking to put in place?

POH: We'll be doing things like 3D scanning. Let's take a Victorian Cross, the highest UK medal someone can be awarded. We could render a copy and sell it in the shop. Or if you're a researcher, rather than having to arrange to go into a hermetically sealed environment, we can scan and store information about all these fairly small scale things and do a 3D print for you.

We want this to be good for researchers. The British government has an archive of millions of conflict and peacetime photos of soldiers. What we're looking to do is put a system in place using facial recognition to tie these photos together. Say this soldier here has appeared in this photo, but we also have another photo with that soldier. Then we could start to build a history of, say, a battalion. It would give a much richer overview.

MB: And there's also a genealogical component.

POH: Say your dad fought in Korea, for instance. We have a photo of him here. By the way, we also have a photo of him having a cup of tea with his friends, or of him sitting in the sentry towers enjoying Christmas. The more photos you scan, the more you find these connections.

People will come back, because they want to know more about where dad was stationed, what campaigns he fought in, what medals he won. We also want to give those who fought the opportunity to say, "Oh, I remember him. He was a bit of a joker. I wonder what happened to him?" And then trace that along and build the genealogy out of that.

MB: It sounds like recognizing that many faces would require a tremendous about of storage.

POH: You're hitting on to one of the biggest challenges: Information growth and compression. With the facial recognition system, building up several nodes, taking info from many different cameras. That takes a lot of space. It really is big data, and needs a big back end.

But we're starting small, with one museum. Then we'll be able to extrapolate figures, and look at revenue streams so we can defray cost. At some point we'll start leveraging cloud computing. I'm not an expert in cloud infrastructure, so I'll talk to someone who is. That's a decision I don't have to make right now.

MB: What are some other problems you're running into?

POH: At the moment, the image extraction only really works with one person. With more than that, it starts to get fuzzy. I want to give a much crisper rendering of everyone. I'm talking to Intel® for their ideas, and they're actively looking for something to smooth that out. That's one of the big ones for me. It's a showcase feature. You can put it in front of someone and say, "You stand in that film footage. You're in there." It's an instant "wow." Things like facial recognition are subtler, hard to see. But the video wall is a great selling feature. Then you can get to tracking around the museum.

There's an organization called the Ogilby Trust that's very active behind the war museums throughout the UK. They're keen on getting some of this tech. So we're trying to get together a good demo for them and push the boundary here. I'm working very rapidly to get features in so that by October of this year we'll have an alpha release to put in actual museums.

My focus is on trying to save one museum. But it's not going to be limited to the military. Let's make all museums more interesting and interactive. Science museums, for instance, are much more interactive and tactile.

This is a software and hardware solution. It needs a lot of cooperative technologies.

Right now, we're at a point of convergence between what we can imagine and what is possible. It's an amazing place to be. With Intel® RealSense™ Technology, Intel® has given me the opportunity to find my imagination. We can put in place systems we saw in films 15 years ago. Now we can do it, and take that to the next level.

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