We’ve been announcing loud and clear that we are adding augmented reality capabilities to PhillyHistory.org, a web application we built for the Philadelphia Department of Records that enables the geographic search and management of tens of thousands of historic photos and maps.

Currently, PhillyHistory users are able to search the website from their smart phones and compare the historic images from PhillyHistory.org with the location where they are standing.  If they are not standing in the street, they can also access  contemporary 360-degree street level views on PhillyHistory.org,  thanks to the system’s integration with Google Street View and Google Earth, to see what a location looks like today.  However, augmented reality technology is different in the sense that it enables users to access additional information about the world around them in relation to their location as they point their smart phone directly at a building or street.

Why are we involved in this?

Research.  While we hear and have read about unbelievably exciting projects using augmented reality, like the app released a few months ago by the Museum of London, augmented reality technology is still in its infancy and not much has been written about what is and is not possible.  The Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to research both the creation of historic photographs as overlays and how augmented reality scales with a very large database of assets. Remember, PhillyHistory.org currently holds over 93,000 assets (and is still growing)!

The Department of Records will initially provide point-and-view access to a subset of approximately 500 historic photographs of selected sites around the city (thanks to Deb Boyer and our great PhillyHistory interns*) for a prototype application we are building as part of our research. Users will be able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The prototype application will focus on images from several neighborhoods in the downtown area although images from other neighborhoods will also be used in order to evaluate issues such as tree cover, building height and other sources for multi-path error that may affect the accuracy of the augmented reality display.  In addition to the 500 photographs, the project team will work with an advisory committee, three of whom are the co-editors of the planned Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, to provide additional interpretive information for up to 20 of the 500 sites.

Josh Marcus who is working with Erik Osheim on the prototype application is already recording his progress in a Developer Journal on our Labs blog, but we are also planning to publish a white paper through NEH later this year to summarize our findings, which we will make available for free.  The white paper will outline our research into various methods for creating an augmented reality application as well as the implementation process in both iPhone and Android platforms.  We hope our conclusions on the successes and challenges will prove useful to other organizations considering implementation of augmented reality applications.

* Read captivating blogs written by Hillary Kativa, Timothy Horning, Leslie O’Neill, and Deb on PhillyHistory.org’s blog.  Great thanks go to our guest PhillyHistory bloggers as well: Steve Ujifusa, Ron Hoess, Shawn Evans, Christopher Dougherty, Harry Boonin, Ron Avery, and others.