HAPTIC DEVICES AND TACTILE EXPERIENCES IN MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

Abstract

Museums all around the globe are starting to adopt advanced technologies that enable the visitors to interact with digital replicas of their collections and artworks. Immersive and interactive virtual reality applications represent one of the most appealing and most used technologies within modern museum exhibitions areas. Using these types of applications the visitors can have access to additional layers of information which can be presented in different languages and presented to the visitor when they demand it using advanced digital interactivity. But the major drawback of these applications is that they don’t allow the users to experience tactile exploration regarding the shapes and ornaments of the cultural heritage artefacts. People are programmed to gather and receive sensory information using their sight, hearing but also using tactile experiences. In order to enable tactile experiences within museum exhibitions, modern technologies such as haptic devices can be installed to enable the visitors to examine the shape of the 3D digital replicas of real artefacts. This paper presents a case study of a haptic device instalment within a museum exhibition that can enable real time tactile exploration of digitized artefacts.