In-Situ Visualization for Cultural Heritage Sites using Novel Augmented Reality Technologies

[ES] Mobile Augmented Reality is an ideal technology for presenting information in an attractive, comprehensive and personalized way to visitors of cultural heritage sites. One of the pioneer projects in this area was certainly the European project ArcheoGuide (IST-1999-11306) which developed and evaluated Augmented Reality (AR) at a very early stage. Many progresses have been done since then, and novel devices and algorithms offer novel possibilities and functionalities. In this paper we present current research work and discuss different approaches of Mobile AR for cultural heritage. Since this area is very large we focus on the visual aspects of such technologies, namely tracking and computer vision, as well as visualization.The work discussed in this article was supported by the European Union IST framework (IST 1999-11306) project ArcheoGuide and is continued in the current project iTACITUS (IST 2.5.10 – 034520).Stricker, D.; Pagani, A.; Zoellner, M. (2010). In-Situ Visualization for Cultural Heritage Sites using Novel Augmented Reality Technologies. Virtual Archaeology Review. 1(2):37-41. https://doi.org/10.4995/var.2010.4682OJS374112LEPETIT V., LAGGER P., FUA P.: Randomized trees for real-time keypoint recognition. Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2 (2005), 775-781. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/cvpr.2005.288VLAHAKIS, Vassilios; IOaNNIDIS, Nikos; KARIGIANNIS, John; TSOTROS, Manolis; GOUNARIS, Michael; STRICKER, Didier;GLEUE, Tim; DAEHNE, Patrick; ALMEIDA, Luis Archeoguide: Challenges and Solutions of a Personalized Augmented Reality Guide for archaeological sites IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 22 (2002), 5, pp. 52-60STRICKER, Didier Tracking with Reference Images: A Real-Time and Markerless Tracking Solution for Out-Door Augmented Reality Applications International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (VAST), Glyfada, Greece, 2001, pp. 91-96.ZOELLNER, Michael, PAGANI Alain, STRICKER, Didier: "Reality filtering: A visual time machine in augmented reality", in VAST 2008. Proceedings (December).ITACITUS, 2008. "Intelligent tourism and cultural information through ubiquitous services." http://www.itacitus.org.FISCHER, J. 2005. Stylized augmented reality for improved immersion. Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality, 195-202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/vr.2005.1492774http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/vr.2005.7

Tracking Multiple Persons Based on a Variational Bayesian Model

International audienceObject tracking is an ubiquitous problem in computer vision with many applications in human-machine and human-robot interaction, augmented reality, driving assistance, surveillance, etc. Although thoroughly investigated, tracking multiple persons remains a challenging and an open problem. In this paper, an online variational Bayesian model for multiple-person tracking is proposed. This yields a variational expectation-maximization (VEM) algorithm. The computational efficiency of the proposed method is due to closed-form expressions for both the posterior distributions of the latent variables and for the estimation of the model parameters. A stochastic process that handles person birth and person death enables the tracker to handle a varying number of persons over long periods of time. The proposed method is benchmarked using the MOT 2016 dataset

Augmented reality application assessment for disseminating rock art

[EN] Currently, marker-based tracking is the most used method to develop augmented reality (AR) applications (apps). However, this method cannot be applied in some complex and outdoor settings such as prehistoric rock art sites owing to the fact that the usage of markers is restricted on site. Thus, natural feature tracking methods have to be used. There is a wide range of libraries to develop AR apps based on natural feature tracking. In this paper, a comparative study of Vuforia and ARToolKit libraries is carried out, analysing factors such as distance, occlusion and lighting conditions that affect user experience in both indoor and outdoor environments, and eventually the app developer. Our analysis confirms that Vuforia¿s user experience indoor is better, faster and flicker-free whether the images are properly enhanced, but it does not work properly on site. Therefore, the development of AR apps for complex outdoor environments such as rock art sites should be performed with ARToolKit.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad to the project HAR2014-59873-R. Similarly, the authors want to express their gratitude to the General Directorate of Culture and Heritage, Conselleria d'Educacio, Investigacio, Cultura i Esport, Generalitat Valenciana for letting us access and carry out research at the archaeological site.Blanco-Pons, S.; Carrión-Ruiz, B.; Lerma, JL. (2018). Augmented reality application assessment for disseminating rock art. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 78(8):10265-10286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6609-xS1026510286788Alahi A., Ortiz R., Vandergheynst P (2012) FREAK: fast retina keypoint. Comput Vis Pattern Recognit 510–517 . doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2012.6247715Amin D, Govilkar S (2015) Comparative study of augmented reality Sdk’S. 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Wearable and mobile devices

Information and Communication Technologies, known as ICT, have undergone dramatic changes in the last 25 years. The 1980s was the decade of the Personal Computer (PC), which brought computing into the home and, in an educational setting, into the classroom. The 1990s gave us the World Wide Web (the Web), building on the infrastructure of the Internet, which has revolutionized the availability and delivery of information. In the midst of this information revolution, we are now confronted with a third wave of novel technologies (i.e., mobile and wearable computing), where computing devices already are becoming small enough so that we can carry them around at all times, and, in addition, they have the ability to interact with devices embedded in the environment. The development of wearable technology is perhaps a logical product of the convergence between the miniaturization of microchips (nanotechnology) and an increasing interest in pervasive computing, where mobility is the main objective. The miniaturization of computers is largely due to the decreasing size of semiconductors and switches; molecular manufacturing will allow for “not only molecular-scale switches but also nanoscale motors, pumps, pipes, machinery that could mimic skin” (Page, 2003, p. 2). This shift in the size of computers has obvious implications for the human-computer interaction introducing the next generation of interfaces. Neil Gershenfeld, the director of the Media Lab’s Physics and Media Group, argues, “The world is becoming the interface. Computers as distinguishable devices will disappear as the objects themselves become the means we use to interact with both the physical and the virtual worlds” (Page, 2003, p. 3). Ultimately, this will lead to a move away from desktop user interfaces and toward mobile interfaces and pervasive computing