The Information Visualization Design of Smart Museums Based on the Digital Twin Theory

Museums are vital to the promotion and protection of culture. However, traditional ways to express culture, such as holding exhibitions in venues, have physical limitations that block cultural outputs. With the development of digital information technology, digital twins can replace these traditional methods and assist museums in overcoming problems of limited information storage, management difficulties, and physical limitations, thereby allowing museums to disseminate culture over the world effectively. Specifically, digital twin is a process of establishing a multidisciplinary, multi-scale ,and multi-physics model that simulates objects in reality. Digital twin theory can store and represent detailed information of objects, such as their materials, textures, and 2D and 3D images. In fact, digital twin theory has already been applied in different usage scenarios in multidisciplinary fields. Also, digital twin has great importance to the modernization of smart museums. Here, we performed a literature review and qualitative and quantitative analyses to study how the digital twin theory and related digital information technologies promote the construction of smart museums. First, we summarized the process of realizing smart museums with the digital twin theory. Second, we discussed the interactive relationships among physical objects, virtual objects, service platforms, and digital platforms. Third, we described related technologies of digital twin theory from three aspects: The information representation, restoration, and exhibition of cultural relic. By combining concrete instances, we analyzed the construction of smart museums in the National Palace Museum and Mogao Grotto Digital Exhibition Center in Dunhuang and discussed the application of digital twin theory in visualizing museum information. Lastly, based on the digital twin theory, we summarized three characteristics of information visualization design of smart museums – high precision, multiple dimensions, and interactivity – and discussed the challenges faced by smart museums. The challenges that require further optimization of the digital twin system include but are not limited to immature technology, inconsistent standards, and high hardware requirements. Overall, our work will provide a reference for the future development of smart museums.