Content rendering and interaction technologies for digital heritage systems

Existing digital heritage systems accommodate a huge amount of digital repository information; however their content rendering and interaction components generally lack the more interesting functionality that allows better interaction with heritage contents. Many digital heritage libraries are simply collections of 2D images with associated metadata and textual content, i.e. little more than museum catalogues presented online. However, over the last few years, largely as a result of EU framework projects, some 3D representation of digital heritage objects are beginning to appear in a digital library context. In the cultural heritage domain, where researchers and museum visitors like to observe cultural objects as closely as possible and to feel their existence and use in the past, giving the user only 2D images along with textual descriptions significantly limits interaction and hence understanding of their heritage. The availability of powerful content rendering technologies, such as 3D authoring tools to create 3D objects and heritage scenes, grid tools for rendering complex 3D scenes, gaming engines to display 3D interactively, and recent advances in motion capture technologies for embodied immersion, allow the development of unique solutions for enhancing user experience and interaction with digital heritage resources and objects giving a higher level of understanding and greater benefit to the community. This thesis describes DISPLAYS (Digital Library Services for Playing with Shared Heritage Resources), which is a novel conceptual framework where five unique services are proposed for digital content: creation, archival, exposition, presentation and interaction services. These services or tools are designed to allow the heritage community to create, interpret, use and explore digital heritage resources organised as an online exhibition (or virtual museum). This thesis presents innovative solutions for two of these services or tools: content creation where a cost effective render grid is proposed; and an interaction service, where a heritage scenario is presented online using a real-time motion capture and digital puppeteer solution for the user to explore through embodied immersive interaction their digital heritage

Ambient health monitoring: the smartphone as a body sensor network component

Inertial measurement units used in commercial body sensor networks (e.g. animation suits) are inefficient, difficult to use and expensive when adapted for movement science applications concerning medical and sports science. However, due to advances in micro-electro mechanical sensors, these inertial sensors have become ubiquitous in mobile computing technologies such as smartphones. Smartphones generally use inertial sensors to enhance the interface usability. This paper investigates the use of a smartphone’s inertial sensing capability as a component in body sensor networks. It discusses several topics centered on inertial sensing: body sensor networks, smartphone networks and a prototype framework for integrating these and other heterogeneous devices. The proposed solution is a smartphone application that gathers, processes and filters sensor data for the purpose of tracking physical activity. All networking functionality is achieved by Skeletrix, a framework for gathering and organizing motion data in online repositories that are conveniently accessible to researchers, healthcare professionals and medical care workers

A Dynamic Workflow Management Framework For Digital Heritage And Technology Enhanced Learning

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Personal Motion Capture: Application of Inertial Motion Capture Systems to Sports Technologies

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Museum Interactive Experiences through a 3D Reconstruction of the Church of Santa Chiara

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The application of workflow management to digital heritage resources

Recent years have witnessed a noticeable proliferation in Digital Library Systems (DLSs) and their specialized form represented in Digital Heritage Resources (DHRs). DHRs usually manage a complex and varied mix of digital heritage objects of different types and formats. They tend to be complex in nature and usually involve complex, simultaneous and intersecting workflows. As a result, DHRs impose implementation challenges on any solutions that aim to manage their workflows. Thus, despite the proliferation of DHRs, it is a noteworthy trend that there is a general lack of workflow management solutions that can be utilized in such systems. As a research area that is rarely covered, this paper therefore presents the design and development of a novel Workflow Management System (WfMS) built to integrate withDHRs specifically, and DLSs in general. In this context, an experimental WfMS aimed to test the validity of workflow management integration with DHRs. The devised WfMS was built as a workflow management solution that can adequately address the specific hurdles imposed by DHR implementations. Additionally, a novel DHR implementation framework called DISPLAYS (Digital Library Services for Playing with Antiquity and Shared Heritage) is presented as a test bed for the proposed WfMS

The application of augmented reality for reanimating cultural heritage

This paper presents the design of a service-oriented architecture to support dynamic cultural content acquisition on a mobile augmented reality system for reanimating cultural heritage. The reanimating cultural heritage system provides several domain interfaces (Web, Web3D, Mobile and Augmented Reality) for presenting cultural objects accessed from an aggregated RCH data repository via web services. This paper largely focuses on the augmented reality system, but discusses the Web, Web3D and Mobile domains to set the paper in context. The mobile augmented reality system performs multiple objects tracking to augment digital media contents on real world cultural object scenes. The proposed mobile augmented reality system is composed of a mobile interface (smartphone, tablet), middleware including the augmented reality SDK and supporting software modules for the augmented reality application, and a web service framework

Real Time Online Motion Capture for Entertainment Applications

We present a real-time online animation and lip syncing solution based on personal motion sensing for use in entertainment and theme park applications. Our solution streams real-time motion capture based animation, video and voice data over the Internet using UDP. Motion capture data is streamed from the eMove mocap suit over the Internet into a client application, which provides a lip synced 3D animated character or puppet. Applications include online digital puppeteering and games where the character is animated in real time

Real Time Motion Capture for Entertainment Applications

We present a real-time online animation and lip syncing solution based on personal motion sensing for use in entertainment and theme park applications. Our solution streams real-time motion capture based animation, video and voice data over the Internet using UDP. Motion capture data is streamed from the eMove mocap suit over the Internet into a client application, which provides a lip synced 3D animated character or puppet. Applications include online digital puppeteering and games where the character is animated in real time

A Dynamic Workflow Management Framework for Digital Heritage and Technology Enhanced Learning

Workflow management systems have become an integral part of most enterprise projects for the production of various tools concerning data and control flow management for more than a decade now. Despite the large number of workflow systems none have been applied to the digital heritage e-Learning domain. This paper represents an optimised solution for customising the architecture of workflows in order to improve productivity (effectiveness) in a service-oriented digital library and technology enhanced learning system. This paper presents the application of workflows to e-Learning and digital libraries within a dynamic workflow management framework. Our workflow solution is described and analysed by considering a typical use case scenario. Particular emphasis is placed on examining how the new workflow model can improve the speed and increase the efficiency of a digital library focused on e-Learning. Our service-oriented digital library architecture is demonstrated by integrating four main components using web services: 1) digital content creation, in for example 3D content creation, 2) archival, i.e. storage and management of this 3D content for use and re-use, 3) organisation of digital heritage content into an e-Learning exposition or package and 4) final presentation of this content that exploits innovative visualisation and interaction techniques based on social networking, which allows incorporation of user defined content in a virtual and augmented reality Web 2.0 mashup. Other technologies exploited in this scenario include a web service-based Grid solution for generating 3D animations from the 3D content