BANGALURU :Following the footsteps of globally renowned museums, Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum (VITM) is preparing a plan to become, what authorities believe, the country’s first smart museum.
To start with, one of the museum’s galleries will be accessible on smartphones through an interactive app that will be made available for the public free of cost. With a tap, users can virtually access the museum’s map along with audio-video animations of its popular installations.
This is akin to ‘virtual tours’ that the likes of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, the Louvre in Paris and a host of other museums provide to attract patronage.
“We have been working on this project for some time now. Experts from electronics and computer wings in VITM are readying the blueprint for user experience,” VITM director K G Kumar told Bengaluru Express. “The app would also be interactive, in that it will automatically show information about an installation or feature the user is standing near.”
In addition, the app would notify users of events and information on entry fee and working hours, besides telling them what they can explore in the museum.
Once the app is ready, printed handouts to visitors will be minimised, which would make it more eco-friendly, Kumar said.
With an entry fee of just Rs 40, the 53-year old museum gets over 10 lakh visitors annually.
The museum’s latest offerings are the Kitty Hawk simulator of the Wright Brothers’ aeroplane and Science on a Sphere, a high-resolution digital experience developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA.
Naveen Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Prachin Bharat, a company credited with establishing the Nalanda Multimedia Museum, lauded the plan.
“When information is available on smartphones or tabs, it not only makes the experience intuitive, the visitors will take home a lot of information with them. This initiative will be a mix of practical and theoretical experience for visitors,” Sharma said, adding that the concept would increase the museum’s footfall.