Archaeology and Cultural Heritage

Introduction

Augmented reality has been succesfully applied to archaeology and cultural heritage through an EU project called ARCO. ARCO is a complete tool chain starting with stereo photogrammetry based digitization of artefacts, their refinement, collection and management with other multimedia data, and visualization using virtual and augmented reality is presented. It provides a one-stop-solution for museums to create, manage and present both content and context for virtual exhibitions. Interoperability and standards are also key features of our system allowing both small and large museums to build a bespoke system suited to their needs. The project helped to implement three different AR interfaces for museum environments including:

Augmented Reality Interface Toolkit

This system proposes a high-level augmented reality interface toolkit that allows the combination of audio-visual information with a real world environment in an easy and interactive way. The system is based on MFC libraries, OpenGL, OpenAL, Microsoft Vision SDK and the vision tracking libraries from the well known ARToolKit. Simple and cost effective hardware complements the software solution. This AR interface toolkit can be used as an exemplar for the development of other applications. Users can interact with the presented information in several different ways. Realistic augmentation is also supported such as soft and hard shadows, without sacrificing the overall efficiency of the system. To illustrate the feasibility of our AR interface toolkit a cultural heritage application for museum environments is briefly presented.

The evolution of the Augmented Reality Interface Toolkit lead to a new interface called MRGIS.

• Liarokapis, F., White, M., Augmented Reality Techniques for Museum Environments, Mediterranean Journal of Computers and Networks, 1(2): 95-102, Oct, (2005). ISSN: 1744-2397. Pdf

• Liarokapis, F., White, M., Lister, P.F., Augmented Reality Interface Toolkit, Proc. International Symposium on Augmented and Virtual Reality, IV04-AVR, IEEE Computer Society, London, 761-767, (2004). ISBN: 0-7695-2177-0. Pdf

• White, M., Liarokapis, F., Darcy, J., Mourkoussis, N., Petridis, P., Lister, P.F., Augmented Reality for Museum Artefact Visualization, Proc. 4th Irish Workshop on Computer Graphics, Eurographics Ireland Chapter, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 29-30th April, 75-80, (2003). ISBN: 1649-1807. Pdf

 

Augmented Representations of Cultural Objects (ARCO)

This project describes ARCO, a complete tool chain starting with stereo photogrammetry based digitization of artefacts, their refinement, collection and management with other multimedia data, and visualization using virtual and augmented reality is presented. ARCO provides a one-stop-solution for museums to create, manage and present both content and context for virtual exhibitions. Interoperability and standards are also key features of our system allowing both small and large museums to build a bespoke system suited to their needs.

The official page of the ARCO project can be accessed from here.

• White, M., Mourkoussis, N., Darcy, J., Petridis, P., Liarokapis, F., Lister, P.F., Walczak, K., Wojciechowski, R., Cellary, W., Chmielewski, J., Stawniak, M., Wiza, W., Patel, M., Stevenson, J., Manley, J., Giorgini, F., Sayd, P., Gaspard, F., ARCO—An Architecture for Digitization, Management and Presentation of Virtual Exhibitions, Proc. 22nd International Conference on Computer Graphics (CGI'2004), IEEE Computer Society, Hersonissos, Crete, June 16-19, 622-625, (2004). ISBN: 0-7695-2171-1. Pdf
• Mourkoussis, N., Liarokapis, F., Darcy, J., Pettersson, M., Petridis, P., Lister, P.F., White, M., Virtual and Augmented Reality Applied to Educational and Cultural Heritage Domains, Proc. Business Applications of Virtual Reality, BAVR 2002 - Workshop on Business Applications of Virtual Reality, Poznan, Poland, April 24-25, 367-372, (2002). ISBN: 83-916842-0-2. Pdf

ARCOLite

This project is called ARCOLite and it is a part of the ARCO project. Technically speaking, ARCOLite is a low cost XML based client-server architecture for building and presenting digital heritage content in virtual museums. Our system includes components for creation and refinement of virtual artefacts including virtual reconstruction of buildings; XML content management, XML technologies for content repositories and presentation; and content visualisation using Web3D, virtual and augmented reality.

The artefacts which are presented above represent real artefacts that belong to two cultural heritage partners of the ARCO project including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Sussex Archaeological Society.

• Liarokapis, F., Sylaiou, S., Basu, A., Mourkoussis, N., White, M., Lister, P.F., An Interactive Visualisation Interface for Virtual Museums, Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Brussels, Belgium, 6-10 Dec, 47-56, (2004). ISBN: 3-905673-18-5. Pdf

• Mourkoussis, N., Liarokapis, F., Basu, A., White, M., Lister, P.F., Using XML Technologies to Present Digital Content with Augmented Reality, Proc. 5th Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop, Eurographics Ireland Workshop Series, Volume 3, Eds.: D. Murphy and J.O'Mullane, 9th Sept, Cork, Ireland, 16-23, (2004). ISSN: 1649-1807. Pdf
• White, M., Liarokapis, F., Mourkoussis, N., Basu, A., Darcy, J., Petridis, P., Sifniotis, M., Lister, P.F., ARCOlite — an XML based system for building and presenting Virtual Museums using Web3D and Augmented Reality, Proc. Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics 2004, Eurographics UK Chapter, IEEE Computer Society, University of Bournemouth, 8-10th June, 94-101, (2004). ISBN: 0-7695-2137-1. Pdf
• White, M., Liarokapis, F., Mourkoussis, N., Basu, A., Darcy, J., Petridis, P., Lister, P.F., A lightweight XML driven architecture for the presentation of virtual cultural exhibitions (ARCOLite), Proc. IADIS International Conference of Applied Computing 2004, Eds. Nuno Guimaraes and Pedro Isaias, IADIS Press, Lisbon, Portugal, March 23-26, 205-212, (2004). ISBN 972-98947-3-6. Pdf

Videos

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