Mercator Atlas Robot: Bridging the Gap between Ancient Maps and Modern Travelers with Gestural Mixed Reality

The advances made in both Human Computer Interfaces (HCIs) and in Mixed Reality (MR) systems during the past decade have opened the gates to countless new applications in fields ranging from applied science to fine arts. In fact, computers have evolved from boxes with which it was possible to interact solely using mice, keyboards and monitors, to become devices that permeate and intersect with the space where human beings live and move, being now capable of interpreting their gestures as long as mixing with and contain the objects that surround them. Such richness has been widely employed within new and engaging computer games, where it is now possible to play while moving and connecting to the virtual characters that compose mixed worlds, directly from home. However, such potential is far from being fully exploited everywhere. In public spaces such as museums and exhibitions, for example, new means of interaction and mixed worlds could contemporarily reach two goals: (a) augment the user experience, and, (b) increase visitors' accessibility to all artifacts. In this work we show how both goals have been achieved with the devise and implementation of Mercator Atlas Robot, an application that supports the exploration of Mercator's World Atlas, the book that first has wholly described the world through a collection of maps. In particular, we here describe how the combination of a gestural interface and mixed reality paradigms has let visitors travel through Mercator's volume in a simple and intuitive way. All this has been possible with only low cost, off-the-shelf, hardware, where all the intelligence is entirely based on software components.