AR experience Ketelhuis

Project description

We are developing an interactive AR experience for the Ketelhuis in Steyl, a restored 19th-century steam engine housed in a museum in a monastery village along the Maas.

The experience is built for primary school classes and runs on tablets using marker-based AR. Children work together to start up the steam engine, guided by Broeder Heinz: a fictional young German monk and machinist whose voice is generated using ElevenLabs AI.

The core goal is teaching the energy chain, coal, fire, water, steam, movement, and electricity, through hands-on collaborative interaction rather than passive instruction.

Context

The Ketelhuis currently offers guided tours for school groups, but volunteers and stakeholders recognised that the experience can feel dry and abstract for younger children. Kids often lack the historical context to understand why a steam engine mattered, and the machine, though fully restored and operational, is not something they can safely interact with directly.

The museum wanted a concept that could make that gap tangible and engaging. Our brief was to design and prototype an experience that combines education and play, gives children agency, and can be delivered by a non-technical volunteer with minimal setup.

Results

We delivered a working AR prototype built in Unity, running on tablet hardware, using marker-based object tracking on the physical steam engine. The experience includes a fully developed narrative with a voiced character (Broeder Heinz), scripted in Dutch with German-accented AI voice generation in ElevenLabs. A first round of observational usability testing with primary school children has been completed.

We also produced persona documentation, a hardware recommendation for the museum, and a structured concept for the full energy-chain experience from startup to the moment the printing press runs.