RFID brings Italy's prehistoric past to life

Ultra-modern technology is helping to bring Italy's prehistoric past to life. A pilot implementation of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology at the Museo delle Origini (Museum of the Origins of Man) in Rome allows visitors to access in-depth multimedia information about each exhibit simply by walking near it.

The Museum has implemented technology from Oracle and Intel to create an environment it calls Wi-Art, in which information about its exhibits is automatically transferred to visitors' handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) as they approach. Access to the information creates a richer and more engaging experience for museum visitors, allowing them to understand each exhibit in its wider context.

Relevant information is stored in an RFID tag attached to each exhibit, and is automatically displayed on the screen of a PDA equipped with an RFID tag reader when the PDA comes into range. Text-to-speech technology allows information to be 'spoken' to visitors with impaired vision.

The information ranges from descriptive text profiles to audio and video clips, and uses data that had been previously compiled by the museum and stored in an Oracle Database. The new system allows the museum to make more of that information accessible to visitors than had been available previously, enhancing the quality and educational capacity of each museum visit. It also improves the accuracy of the classification process of archaeological finds, as now everything is structured and stored in a database.

The system was developed by the RFID Lab at the University of La Sapienza in Rome, which also houses the museum itself. The lab has been investigating practical applications of RFID since 2004, and now functions as a design, testing and prototyping centre where organizations can build and try out new RFID-based systems. Oracle and Intel also collaborated on this project, building on the Memorandum of Understanding that both companies have signed with the lab, agreeing to provide it with hardware, software and technology experts to further its research and development work.

Both the RFID Lab and the museum believe that technology applications of this kind are necessary to address increasing demand for more educational, entertaining and interactive museum experiences. As RFID moves further into the mainstream, more museums and galleries are likely to start investigating how they can harness it in order to provide a richer and more contextualized experience to visitors.