Singapore President Tony Tan launched a set of interactive mobile educational trails on June 15 to help visitors explore the Istana, the official residence and office of the President of Singapore and the working office of the prime minister.
The trails are equipped with information, meaningful stories and interesting facts about the hotspots present along the path. The individual hotspots incorporate location-based technology such as GPS, Image Recognition (IR) and Augmented Reality (AR) wayfinding, in-app quizzes and in-app games. At selected hotspots, users can take creative photos using the in-app camera and share them on social media.
Three trails were launched: 1) The Presidents’ Trail – Covering seven locations within Central Singapore, each telling the story of Singapore’s Presidents and their contributions to the country; 2) The Istana Heritage Gallery Trail, which showcases Istana’s history through interactive elements which interplay with the state artefacts, artworks and state gifts on display at the gallery; and 3) The Istana Park Trail, which takes visitors on a discovery tour of the flora and fauna around the Istana Park.
These were developed through an initiative by students and teachers from various educational institutions in Singapore. The Presidents’ Trail was jointly developed by students from Temasek Polytechnic and Yusof Ishak Secondary School, in collaboration with the President’s Office. The Istana Heritage Gallery and Istana Park trails were developed by students from the Singapore Management University,working together with the President’s Office.
Visitors to the Istana Heritage Gallery and during the Istana Open Houses, can begin their multi-sensorial journey of the Istana by downloading the Istana Mobile Educational Trails via the LocoMole mobile app, available on both Google Play and the App Store.
The LocoMole app is developed by LDR Technology Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean location-based mobile application and e-learning solution company. As part of SPRING Singapore’s Collaborative Industry Project (CIP), in 2015 SPRING Singapore appointed LDR Pte Ltd to tap on A*STAR’s Snap2Tell (S2T) technology package to enhance LDR’s Pocket-Trips mobile app, which enables users to create their own location-based mobile trails without any programming knowledge. The app was created from the enhancement of the S2T RTG, involving image recognition capabilities, originally developed by the Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) in A*STAR.
Featured image: Istana (by Char Lee from Singapore/ CC BY 2.0
