Augmented Reality in the Cemetery

Symbols cut in stone
Visible to all who pass
Silent but speaking

–Amy Larner Giroux–

As part of UCF’s Veterans Legacy Program, we proposed to bring our project into the cemetery as an augmented reality app. This means that visitors can be in Florida National Cemetery, St. Augustine National Cemetery, Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, and Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and can access veteran biographies while standing at the individual project grave sites.

The augmented reality app requires an internet connection. It allows you to download our app and use your smart devise to read UCF student-authored biographies at the cemetery, or by printing photos of the headstones we have in our K-12 materials, in a classroom setting. The camera on your phone reads the the headstone against the image in our app, recognizes it, and brings you to the story of the Veteran as you stand at his or her eternal resting place. In some cemeteries, such as Florida National Cemetery, cellular data signals may be sporadic or nonexistent depending on your carrier. A wifi hotspot is recommended until the surrounding area’s infrastructure gets better coverage. We apologize for the inconvenience at this time; as the project continues to be enhanced we hope that the infrastructure will grow to support it. A pamphlet, available at the visitor’s center of Florida National Cemetery, and online, contains a list of all veteran biographies with their location in sections MC, MD, ML, 103, 104, and 201. This guide will help visitors locate each of the 109 augmented graves within these sections. Once at the grave site, visitors can use their smart device to access the online biography. A list of augmented gravesites for St. Augustine National Cemetery will be available onsite in the index notebook (coming soon). Online lists will be available for the ABMC cemeteries in France.

We are using an app called HP Reveal that allows Apple^® and Android^® devices to recognize a project grave marker and link to the particular biography. For Windows^® phone users we have included QR codes in the lists that link to the biographies.

Please download the installation and usage instructions for the augmented reality app and begin accessing the Veterans' stories in the classroom or cemetery.

Florida National Cemetery Guide
Saint Augustine National Cemetery Guide

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