A Framework for Recommending Multimedia Cultural Visiting Paths

In this work, we present a general framework for Cultural Heritage applications able to uniformly manage heterogeneous multimedia data coming from several web repositories and to provide context- Aware recommendation services in order to generate dynamic multimedia visiting paths useful for the users during the exploration of different kinds of cultural sites. A specific application of our system within the cultural heritage domain is proposed together with some experimental results

From Music to Museum: Applications of Multi-Objective Ant Colony Systems to Real World Problems

International audienceRecommender systems are a flourishing domain in computer science for almost 30 years now. This rising popularity follows closely the number of data collected all around the world. Each and every internet user produces a huge amount of content during his lifetime. Recommender systems proactively help users to navigate these pieces of information by gathering, and selecting the items to users' needs. In this paper, we discuss the possibility and interest of applying our Multi-Objective Ant Colony System called AntRS to recommend items in different application domains. In particular, we show how our model performs better than the state-of-the-art models with music dataset, and describe our work-in-progress with the museum of fine arts in Nancy (France). The motivation behind this change of application domain is the recommendation of progressive sequences rather than unordered lists of items

Pepper4Museum: Towards a Human-like Museum Guide

With the recent advances in technology, new ways to engage visitors in a museum have been proposed. Relevant examples range from the simple use of mobile apps and interactive displays to virtual and augmented reality settings. Recently social robots have been used as a solution to engage visitors in museum tours, due to their ability to interact with humans naturally and familiarly. In this paper, we present our preliminary work on the use of a social robot, Pepper in this case, as an innovative approach to engaging people during museum visiting tours. To this aim, we endowed Pepper with a vision module that allows it to perceive the visitor and the artwork he is looking at, as well as estimating his age and gender. These data are used to provide the visitor with recommendations about artworks the user might like to see during the visit. We tested the proposed approach in our research lab and preliminary experiments show its feasibility

Contributions to the design of mobile applications for visitors of Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens are among the most visited touristic attractions, offering scientific, educational, cultural and leisure activities to preserve and enhance heritage and disseminating specialised knowledge on science and history. There are several mobile applications (apps) to support visitors of Botanical Gardens, which explore augmented reality technologies to enrich their experience. Our work aims to systematize a set of requirements that must be considered in the development of these apps. We have applied them in the development of an app for a Botanical Garden available for Android and iOS. Preliminary data analysis of the use of our app revealed some characteristics of the visitors and the preferred tours. Meanwhile we are evaluating our app by conducting a user study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Toward a more accessible cultural heritage. Experiences, methodologies and tools.

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

The Internet of Things supporting the Cultural Heritage domain: analysis, design and implementation of a smart framework enhancing the smartness of cultural spaces

Nowadays embedded systems have reached a great level of maturity and diffusion thanks to their small size, low power consumption, large connectivity and variety of application in everyday contexts. These systems, if properly structured and configured, can signifi- cantly increase the smartness of the environments where they are deployed, monitoring and continuously collecting data to be processed and elaborated. In this perspective, the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm supports the transition from a closed world, in which an object is characterized by a descriptor, to an open world, in which objects interact with the surrounding environment, because they have become ”intelligent”. Accordingly, not only people will be connected to the internet, but objects such as cars, fridges, televisions, water management systems, buildings, monuments and so on will be connected as well. The Cultural Heritage represents a worldwide resource of inestimable value, attracting millions of visitors every year to monuments, museums and art exhi- bitions. Fundamental aspects of this resource to be investigated are its promotion and people enjoyment. Indeed, to achieve an enjoyment of a cultural space that is attractive and sustainable, it is necessary to realize ubiquitous and multimedia solutions for users’ interaction to enrich their visiting experience and improve the knowledge transmission process of a cultural site. The main target of this PhD Thesis is the study of the IoT paradigm, devoted to the design of a smart framework supporting the fruition, enjoyment and tutelage of the Cultural Heritage domain. In order to assess the proposed approach, a real case study is presented and discussed. In detail, it represents the deployment of our framework during an art exhibition, named The Beauty or the Truth within the Monumental Complex of San Domenico Maggiore, Naples (Italy). Following the Internet of Things paradigm, the proposed intelligent framework relies on the integration of a Sensor Network of Smart Objects with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy technologies to identify, locate and support users. In this way technology can become a mediator between visitors and fruition, an instrument of connection between people, objects, and spaces to create new social, economic and cultural opportunities