London Museum

An object recognition experience that recreates the delight of discovery and expert identification

A photograph of an object recognition experience at the Secrets of the Thames exhibition at London Museum Docklands. On a desk are 2 screens side by side, a turntable with 5 objects on it. Above the turntable is a camera. A girl is using the interactive whilst wearing headphones. When the turntable is turned a different object moves under the camera. The computer recognises the object and triggers content on the 2 screens. The left screen plays a video of Finds officer Stuart Wyatt describing the object. The right screen displays the object record in the Portable Antiquities Finds Database.
The object recognition finds desk interactive at the Secrets of the Thames exhibition
A photo of a hand holding a very small piece of metal shaped like a cart wheel with a hole in the middle, found on the foreshore of the river Thames

We designed and built an interactive experience where visitors rotate a turntable to place mudlarking finds under a camera. The camera recognises the object and delivers a contextual object narrative — its history, how it ended up in the river, and what it tells us about London's past.

The experience recreates the feeling of showing mudlarking finds to a museum Finds Officer for identification. Each object triggers a unique story, drawing on research from archaeologists and mudlarkers. The interface is deliberately simple: turn, recognise, listen.

A photo of a gloved hands holding a large black metal pin found on the foreshore of the River Thames
A photo of a hand holding a large chunk of yellow beige pottery found on the foreshore of the River Thames

The system was trained on the museum's own collection of Thames foreshore finds. We prototyped and tested extensively on site, refining the recognition accuracy and narrative pacing with real visitors.

A screengrab showing collections of photos grouped by object connected to a machine learning training model.
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