AR Tour Guide

Abstract

Tourism industry in Sri Lanka has faced a rapid development in the past few years. It has become one of the largest revenue generators in Sri Lankan economy. However, Sri Lanka has failed to cater this rapid increase of tourists with good quality travel assistants, more commonly known as guides. Due to that reason, a large number of untrained guides, more commonly known as beach boys has started operating in places where there is a high density of tourists. A lot of tourist has fallen for these fake guides 􀀀’traps and this is negatively effecting Sri Lankan tourism industry. Augmented reality (AR) has been used in the last years as a tool for enhancing collaboration between the real world and virtual environments. One of these fields where AR has been used is the tourism industry. The researcher has develop a cross platform mobile application using Augmented Reality mobile application for tourist which will be acting as a personal tour guide. The application is providing facilities to search for attractions while giving them directions to them. Users will be able to detect attraction just by pointing the mobile device camera. The application also facilitates group travelling where the travelers can keep in sync with each other, avoiding the probability of getting lost in complex road systems in ancient cities such as Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.