Immersive technology for SiMU: discover the new interactive installations

The University of Calabria’s Museum System (SiMU) has reached two major milestones in its mission of scientific outreach. On September 23, two new museum exhibitions were inaugurated: the Zoology Museum and the Museum of Mineralogy and Petrography, which now stand alongside the already established Paleontology Museum.

The new Zoology Museum offers a journey through biodiversity, combining real and virtual environments with interactive pathways, augmented reality experiences, and an immersive room that guides visitors through aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial ecosystems.

The Museum of Mineralogy and Petrography takes visitors into the world of geology and crystallography through a rich collection of more than 2,000 mineral and rock specimens from around the globe, with a special focus on mining areas in Calabria. Thanks to multimedia content and immersive technologies, visitors can observe minerals from an entirely new perspective and explore phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and the processes that shape the Earth and other celestial bodies.

Together, these spaces form a fully integrated museum hub that, thanks in part to our technological contribution, now offers interactive and immersive experiences designed for visitors of all ages.

For these two new exhibitions, two innovative systems based on transparent OLED displays and RFID technology were designed and developed by Doconline, while 3D Research was responsible for the software development that powers the content of both installations.

These interactive spaces are designed to further enhance the museum experience: visitors can see digital informational content appear on the displays, organized into six main thematic areas. An intuitive, user-friendly interface—designed with younger audiences in mind as well—makes interaction simple and natural.

Our work involved both of the new museums.
At the Zoology Museum, in addition to integrating the interactive OLED system, we developed the software for the CAVE: an immersive space that projects visitors into captivating virtual environments enriched with scientific content.

At the Museum of Mineralogy, the installation allows visitors to explore the properties and origins of rocks and minerals in an entirely new way, overlaying images, texts, and animations directly onto the physical objects.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place at Cubo 14B of Ponte Bucci and included several institutional speeches, among them those of Rector Nicola Leone and our President, Fabio Bruno, who is also President of SiMU’s Scientific Council. In his address, he expressed pride in the realization of these projects, highlighting the care devoted to the selection of educational tools and the overall quality of the exhibitions. The use of digital technologies aims to offer the public an engaging and interactive experience, in which scientific content can be tailored to different audiences.

Thanks to the concentration of all three exhibitions within the same building, the museum experience is now more accessible and cohesive, while the modular technological setup ensures ease of updating and long-term scalability of the content.