Context-Based Cultural Visits

Over the last two decades, there have been tremendous advances in mobile technologies, which have increased the interest in studying and developing mobile augmented reality systems, especially in the field of Cultural Heritage. Nowadays, people rely even more on smartphones, for example, when visiting a new city to search for information about monuments and landmarks, and the visitor expects precise and tailored information to his needs. Therefore, researchers started to investigate innovative approaches for presenting and suggesting digital content related to cultural and historical places around the city, incorporating contextual information about the visitor and his needs. This document presents a novel mobile augmented reality application, NearHeritage, that was developed within the scope of the master's thesis on Electrical and Computers Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University (FEUP), in collaboration with INESC TEC. The research carried out was focused on the importance of utilising modern technologies to assist the visitors in finding and exploring Cultural Heritage. In this way, it is provided not only the nearby points-of-interest of a city but also detailed information about each POI. The solution presented uses built-in sensors and hardware of Android devices and takes advantage of various APIs (Foursquare API, Google Maps API and IntelContextSensing) to retrieve information about the landmarks and the visitor context. Also, these are crucial hardware components for implementing the full potential of augmented reality tools to create innovative contents that increase the overall user experience. All the experiments were conducted in Porto, Portugal, and the final results showcase that the concept of a MAR application can improve the user experience in discovering and learning more about Cultural Heritage around the world, creating an interactive, enjoyable and unforgettable adventure

Virtual reality and artificial intelligence applied to consumer experience: a scenario-based approach

Emerging technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been receiving much attention in the Marketing context as a new way to attract customers and enrich their experiences with brands. This study aimed to research the current state of these technologies in Business and discuss the extent to which experiences using Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence may impact a customer experience in three different points of the customer journey: pre-purchase, purchase, and post- purchase stage. An online survey was constructed to measure the effectiveness of VR and AI on a scenario-based approach, along three consumer behaviours in the customer journey – brand associations (pre-purchase stage), purchase intention (purchase stage) and brand loyalty (post-purchase stage). From a sample of 302 respondents, the results suggest that these technologies represent valuable opportunities in Marketing. Overall, the results revealed that the type of experiences addressed in this paper are more prone to instil action (purchase stage) than to build brand associations (pre-purchase stage) or brand loyalty (post-purchase stage). An in-depth analysis of these results manifested interesting outcomes, suggesting several managerial on how to apply these technologies in an integrated marketing communication (IMC) plan.Realidade Virtual (RV) e Inteligência Artificial (IA) têm recebido bastante atenção nos últimos anos pelo facto de serem uma nova forma de atrair os consumidores e enriquecer as suas experiências com as marcas. O principal objetivo desta dissertação é oferecer uma visão do "state of the art" da aplicação destas tecnologias no marketing e investigar até que ponto as experiências com RV e IA podem contribuir para uma melhor experiência do consumidor, nomeadamente em três fases distintas da jornada do consumidor: antes da compra, no momento da compra, e após a compra. Um questionário online foi construído para medir a eficácia de 7 cenários usando RV e AI, em três dos mais representativos comportamentos de uma jornada do consumidor: associações à marca (antes da compra), intenção de comprar (momento da compra) e lealdade à marca (após a compra). Com base numa amostra de 302 participantes, os resultados sugerem que RV e IA contribuem para a criação de significantes oportunidades no marketing. Numa forma geral, os resultados indicam que as experiências que foram selecionadas para este estudo são mais eficientes a persuadir os potenciais consumidores a comprar (momento da compra) do que a contribuir para a criação de associações à marca (antes da compra) ou para construir lealdade à marca (depois da compra). Sendo que, numa análise mais profunda dos resultados, diversas recomendações em como aplicar estas tecnologias numa comunicação integrada de marketing foram retratadas neste estudo

Use of virtual reality as a tool to overcome the post-traumatic stress disorder of pensioners

The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of virtual reality (VR) on overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of pensioners suffering from anxiety disorders. PTSD is usually developed after some serious and traumatic event. This may be for example war conflict, flood, rape, fire, death, volcano eruptions, storms, car accidents, various explosions, torture, robberies or assaults. In the first part, the article deals with a theoretical description of VR itself, namely Samsung Gear VR device that was used for the VR therapy. In this part, there is also PTSD described. The main part is about the research itself, which analyzes not only the area of VR influence in overcoming PTSD but also the basic physiological body functions of respondents - the pensioners. The aim of the paper is to research whether it is possible to improve the health status of the monitored seniors through the purposeful help of VR. The results of our psychological tests after the application of the 6 months long research intervention at the time intervals are promising because there are provable decreases in depression stress. Treatment of PTSD is often difficult, take a lot of time and it is performed mostly with anxiolytics or hypnotic sleep medications. This research presents a method that could speed up therapy and also reduce the use of pharmaceuticals which is very important. Discussion and evaluation of the research are included. © 2019 International Journal on Advanced Science Engineering Information Technology

Transforming the museum-community nexus with technology : a virtual museum infrastructure for participatory engagement and management

Museums play an important role in society as the custodians of heritage, and advances in technology have brought about opportunities for curating, preserving and disseminating heritage through virtual museums. However, this is not matched by an understanding of how these technologies can support these functions, especially given the varying levels of resources that museums have at their disposal. To address this problem, a hybrid methodology which combines underpinning theory and practice has been adopted. Initial investigation of the problem takes place through a contextualisation of museology and heritage studies, followed by exploratory case studies that yield design objectives for a Virtual Museum Infrastructure (VMI). A design of the VMI is proposed based on these objectives, and the VMI is instantiated, deployed and evaluated in real-world scenarios using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The findings of this investigation demonstrate that the use of technology provides new opportunities for engagement with heritage, as experts and community members alike can create, curate and preserve content, which can then be disseminated in engaging ways using immersive, yet affordable technologies. This work therefore demonstrates how technology can be used to: (1) support museums in the creation, curation, preservation and dissemination of heritage, through a VMI that provides support for all the stages of the media life cycle, (2) facilitate active use, so that content that is created once can be reused on multiple platforms (for example on the web, on mobile apps and in on-site installations), and (3) encourage connectivity by linking up local museums using a location-aware interface and facilitates the consumption content using digital literacies available to the public. The aforementioned points, coupled with the system instantiations that demonstrate them, represent the contributions of this thesis

VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage, VRTCH 2018, held in Brasov, Romania in May 2018. The 13 revised full papers along with the 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on data acquisition and modelling, visualization methods / audio, sensors and actuators, data management, restoration and digitization, cultural tourism

VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage, VRTCH 2018, held in Brasov, Romania in May 2018. The 13 revised full papers along with the 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on data acquisition and modelling, visualization methods / audio, sensors and actuators, data management, restoration and digitization, cultural tourism

Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts. EVA 2013 Florence

Important Information Technology topics are presented: multimedia systems, data-bases, protection of data, access to the content. Particular reference is reserved to digital images (2D, 3D) regarding Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, Palace – Monuments, Archaeological Sites). The main parts of the Conference Proceedings regard: Strategic Issues, EC Projects and Related Networks & Initiatives, International Forum on “Culture & Technology”, 2D – 3D Technologies & Applications, Virtual Galleries – Museums and Related Initiatives, Access to the Culture Information. Three Workshops are related to: International Cooperation, Innovation and Enterprise, Creative Industries and Cultural Tourism

New HCI techniques for better living through technology

In the Human Computer Interaction community, researchers work on many projects that investigate the efficacy of new technologies for better living, but unlike other research fields, these researchers must have an approach that is typically multi-disciplinary. Technology is always developing thus improving our lives in many ways like education, health and communication. This due to the fact that it is supposed to make life easier. This dissertation explores three main aspects: the first is learning with new technologies, the second is the improvement of real life by using innovative devices while the third is the usage of mobile devices in combination with image processing algorithms and computer graphics techniques. We firstly describe the progress on the state of the art and related work that have been necessary to implement such tools on commodity hardware and deploy them in both mobile and desktop settings. We propose the usage of different technologies in different settings, comparing these solutions for enhancing the interaction experience by introducing virtual/augmented reality tools for supporting this kind of activities. We also applied well-known gamification techniques coming from different mobile applications for demonstrating how users can be entertained and motivated in their working out. We describe our design and prototype of several integrated systems created to improve the educational process, to enhance the shopping experience, to provide new experiences for travellers and even to improve fitness and wellness activities. Finally, we discuss our findings and frame them in the broader context of better living thanks to technology, drawing the lessons learnt from each work while also proposing relative future work

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Europe Chapter 2013 Annual Conference:Human Factors: sustainable life and mobility

On the occasion of the 2013 Meeting in Torino, Ital