Research Article Augmented Reality Experience: From High ...downloads.hindawi.com/journals/am/2014/597476.pdfdigital storytelling. In this way, a speci c goal of the project becomes

Research ArticleAugmented Reality Experience From High-ResolutionAcquisition to Real Time Augmented Contents

Paolo Clini1 Emanuele Frontoni2 Ramona Quattrini1 and Roberto Pierdicca2

1Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile Edile e dellrsquoArchitettura Universita Politecnica delle Marche 60131 Ancona Italy2Dipartimento di Ingegneria dellrsquoInformazione Universita Politecnica delle Marche 60131 Ancona Italy

Correspondence should be addressed to Emanuele Frontoni efrontoniunivpmit

Received 8 August 2014 Accepted 16 November 2014 Published 10 December 2014

Academic Editor Mei-Ling Shyu

Copyright copy 2014 Paolo Clini et al This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licensewhich permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited

This paper presents results of a research project ldquodUcalerdquo that experiments ICT solutions for the museum of Palazzo Ducale(Urbino) In this project the famed painting the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo becomes a case to exemplify a specific approach to the digitalmediation of cultural heritage An augmented reality (AR) mobile application able to enhance the museum visit experience ispresented The computing technologies involved in the project (websites desktop and social applications mobile software andAR) constitute a persuasive environment for the artwork knowledge The overall goal of our research is to provide to culturalinstitutions best practices efficiently on low budgets Therefore we present a low cost method for high-resolution acquisition ofpaintings the image is used as a base in AR approach The proposed methodology consists of an improved SIFT extractor for realtime image The other novelty of this work is the multipoint probabilistic layer Experimental results demonstrated the robustnessof the proposed approach with extensive use of the AR application in front of the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo painting To prove the usability ofthe application and to ensure a good user experience we also carried out several users tests in the real scenario

1 Introduction

In the cultural heritage (CH) valorisation and communi-cation information and communication technology (ICT)offers an easier access and amultiperspective view of artefactsand can also increase cultural heritage education thanks tothe use of innovative learningteaching methods [1] Visitorsof a museum can interact with the content in the mostinteresting way for the introduction of ICT In the lastseveral years many researches aimed to provide museum ofinterfaces and software tools Their intention is to developweb-based virtual museum devices integrating 3D computergraphics and augmented reality (AR) Sylaiou et al [2]demonstrate that there is a relationship between a high levelof presences and the satisfaction and gratification of visitorswhile interacting with a museum simulation system andliving a more attracting experience In the next years the dif-fusion of smartphones and the growing use of social networkson mobile suggest integrating social AR applications anddigital storytelling In this way a specific goal of the project

becomes to translate the people communicative empower-ment [3] due to the social networks in art communicativeempowerment The free use of painting copies sharing andediting might seem downplaying their importance In thiscontext a new read of the Benjaminrsquos essay on ldquoThe Work ofArt in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibilityrdquo is possibleNowadays many reproductions that reactive the object asBenjamin suggested are social reproduction and sharing Inthis way the ldquoaurardquo is not eliminated but augmented [4]

Through digital tools the museum experience becomes alay experience of culture and then the art seems democraticThe ldquowatch and tweetrdquo custom the social interaction on theweb during a medium use is growing and engaging moreandmore the public Google art project represents a referencestandard in the field of social digital libraries (DL) but isnot available and suitable for many Italian museums TheldquoExplore-Collect-Sharerdquo practice is adopted in many websites of world museums The five most popular museumsof the world in 2012 embraced this social communicationsstrategy But the first Italian museum (Uffizi) is placed in

Hindawi Publishing CorporationAdvances in MultimediaVolume 2014 Article ID 597476 9 pageshttpdxdoiorg1011552014597476

2 Advances in Multimedia

19th (The Art Newspaper) with some experimentation inmobile apps only recently Our project wants to introducean ldquoExplore-Collect-Sharerdquo approach [5] in a mobile ARenvironment that it increases museum attractiveness and itallows easy content management for public cultural insti-tutions very fragmented in Italian panorama This projectis conducted by the Soprintendenza per I Beni StoriciArtistici ed Etnoantropologici delleMarche (SBSAEMarche)Universita Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) Universitadi Urbino (Uniurb) and Alma Mater Studiorum Universitadi Bologna (Unibo) The demo within ldquodUcalerdquo projectpresented here experiments ICT solutions for the PalazzoDucale of Urbino and its museum and explores the potentialof image-based systems (IBS) as a technical platform forcreating a connection between technology and setting in a usesituation

The overall goal of our research is to provide to culturalinstitutions the best practices efficiently on low budgets (adetailed comparison with state of the art is reported in theresult section) Therefore we present a low cost method forhigh-resolution acquisition of paintings that is used as abase of knowledge for an image that uses an AR approachThe proposed methodology consists of an improved SIFTextractor for real time image using a robust matching Theother novelty of this work is themultipoint probabilistic layerExperimental results demonstrated the robustness of theproposed approach with extensive use of the AR applicationin front of the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo painting Users tests in thereal scenario were also conducted to prove the usability andensure a good user experience

The paper is organized as follow Section 2 proposes areview on AR techniques applied to digital cultural heritageSection 3 describes the high-resolution acquisition processSection 4 goes deeply inside the proposed image based ARmethodology and finally in Sections 5 and 6 qualitativeresults and user test results and a comparison of the currentsolution with state of the art and relative costs are presentedtogether with conclusions and future works

2 Augmented Reality (AR)

21 Related Work The 1960 can be considered the originof AR in particular thanks to the cinematography whenMorton Heilig created Sensorama [6] a system that madethe viewing experience immersive by enhancing the sensorialperception of the reality Afterwards the computer scientistSutherland created the first virtual reality and augmentedreality head-mounted display system [7 8] Then in 1975Krueger et al realized the Videoplace [9] the first system ofvirtual reality (VR) that gave the user the sensation to interactwith the virtual objects although the term VR was coinedonly in 1989 with the realization of the first 3D software Butit is only in the 90s that the VR became ARThe difference isthat if before the user worked into an environment achievedby a computer now the information comes out from thedevice thanks to the overlapping of digital contents

The first AR software is ARToolKit by Kato andBillinghurst [10] where using the video tracking it is

possible to place a virtual camera in the same point of view ofthe observer and starting from this put contents in overlay

During the year 2000 augmented reality technology hasalready reached a high degree of development thereafterthis system has been introduced into applications such asnavigation medicine urban environment education andcultural heritage

The mobile application augmented reality for archaeo-logical content ARAC Maps [11] based on commerciallyavailable devices with android operating system intends toaugment archaeological paper maps using 3D models andother interactive approaches

Another recent application for mobile devices is AR-TagBrowse [12] that allows tagging and browsing virtual 3Dobjects that pop up in a scene observed by a mobile cameraThe view is interactive and a user can also inserts notes forspecific parts of the object

Also in Italy there are similar projects launched bythe Italian Ministry of University and Regional Govern-ments that implement augmented experiences For exampleTell MeWhere project [13] designed by the University ofModena and Reggio Emilia realizes a system to offer aug-mented experiences to visitors of the Enzo FerrariMuseum inModena Using smartphones and glass cameras this systemrecognizes visitor gestures and provides car details so theycan learn more about the luxury cars Other projects DICETand SMST are launched in Italy in 2013 with the commonaim to augment the experience of visitors with an increasedinteractivity and connectivity [13]

Given the above we can summarizeAR as the enrichmentof the sensorial understanding through a series of digital orcomputer-generated contents which enhance the knowledgeof the environment or objects with artificial informationoverlaid ldquoaboverdquo a screen

Augmented reality (AR) is the phenomenon of addingvirtual elements into our physical reality allowing the visitorsto communicate directly with the exhibitions

22 Cultural Heritage AR Virtual and augmented realitytechnologies have almost invaded many disciplines alsothose not usually related to computer science In fact ARtechnologies have beenwidely adopted in the domains ofmil-itary and medical training urban planning and architecturesuch as for industrial maintenance work (eg in automotiveand aerospace industry) and entertainment Nevertheless anadditional field of application is the furnishing in particularthe interior design and retail solution Though late from thecultural heritage point of view a large number of relatedresearches has been performed in the recent years [14]An example is the Archiguide this system allows the userto experience a VR world by realizing computer-generated3D reconstructions of ruined sites always maintaining himin the ldquoreal worldrdquo [15] Lifeplus is another of AR appliedto historical and archaeological sites using both handhelddevices on site displays [16] Particularly significant is theexample of Arco project which proposes to rebuild themuseum collection or at least part of it in a virtual way

This is very important because for the first time theproblem how to expose the entire collection of the museum

Advances in Multimedia 3

Figure 1 HR acquisition phases and equipment

has been tackled too often concealed due to space limita-tions or for a long time of restoration [17] Moreover TheLouvre-DNP Museum Lab (LDML) is a three-year projectcomprising six presentations with the purpose of obtainingexperience in innovative multimedia approaches that theybring together visitors and artworks [18] An interestingldquovirtualrdquo AR scenario was provided in 2003 by the Dino-Hunter design of the Senckenberg paleontologicalmuseum inGermany [19] In this project young visitors while they viewthe museumrsquos website could start a (virtual) mystery tourmanipulating a (virtual) PDA that augmented the dinosaursrsquoskeletons reconstituting how they would have been like [20]

At last in 2010 the virtual exhibition took place atMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA) of New York that wasonly visible using a mobile phone application called ldquoLayerAugmented Reality browserrdquo which displayed numerousadditional works for each floorThemain aimof the organizerwas to analyse the impact of AR on our public and privatespaces

The following section describes the AR experience testeddirectly on one of the most important artwork of the ItalianRenaissance (XV century) the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo The mainpurpose of this test was to increase the ldquoartwork appreciationrdquoby giving the visitors with some background knowledgean enjoying instrument to see the art and the CH in analternative way in order to enable them to notice and enjoythe artwork characteristics

3 lsquolsquoCittagrave Idealersquorsquo High-ResolutionPhotographs of the Painting

Thefirst purpose of our research is to obtain a low cost acqui-sition way for high-resolution images In order to provide adigital electronic replacement for conventional photographyof paintings several systems were developed in the lastyears [21] They integrate complex acquisition systems andcontrolling software and use dedicated hardware to obtain

Table 1 Acquisition results 1

Sensor one picture 4256 pixel times 2832 pixelmdash300 ppDimension 4256300 = 1418 inch = 36 cmDimension 2832300 = 944 inch = 239 cmScale ratio 1 10Δ 4536 = 125Corrected scale ratio 1 125Max enlargement realpix 245Xndash6X

Camera Nikon D700 12Mp

Lenses70-20028G ED VR AF SNIKKOR | focal duplicatorX2-TC20E-III

Pointing Panohead gigapan and papergrid

Data acquisition On boardPreprocessing Camera rawPostprocessing Photoshop ptgui zoomifySnapshot 32Snapshot time 2 sec F16Dpi on real scale 240mdash1 1Painting acquisitiondimension 22537 times 6433 pixel

Acquisition time withpaper grid 3 hours

Acquisition time withgigapan 30min

Postprocessing time 2 hours

high level of accuracy (resolution colour etc) Moreoverthey are not suitable for the public cultural institutionsbecause they are expensive and often offer more than whatis needed in the field of CH protection and exhibition [22]

The challenge is to guarantee the quality of contentperformance scalability pursuing and at the same time acost reduction not only about the costs connected to thedigitizing process but also about the costs for its sustainabilityFirst of all in our method [23] the camera is at a standand we do not use motorized track Observing Figure 1 andfollowing the workflow in Figure 2 the painting is in hisposition to achieve fast and easy acquisitionway and to lesseninefficiency in the museum The panel of ldquoCitta Idealerdquo is2395 cm times 675 cm It is at a distance of 120 cm from the floorDuring the click phase we obtained a RAW file Then wecheck and manage parameters in the postprocessing phaseFrom 5m of distance by painting we took 32 snapshots Weguaranteed the correct overlap between the pictures thanksto a paper grid that was distant 60 cm from the painting InTable 1 there are the acquisition results with the timing andthe provisioning

Considering HW and SW resources we carry out a zoomand the quality of an image that represents a very goodstandard not only in digital application for web and for


Pseudo-LHRacquisition

Exposure controlcopy ratio and

color check

Camera RAWFile RAW processing

Exposure contrast sharpnessnoise reduction temperaturehistogram color space bitscamera profile aberration

and vignetting

Photoshop

PT GUIColor space management

panorama stitching

Overlap gt30

PhotoshopColor space checkICC incorporation

ZoomifyTessellation

pyramid image

exportationTIFF 8bit

Figure 2 The workflow for the high-resolution image

mobile Indeed the acquisition enables a reproduction of thepainting both in digital printing and in offset printing

A critical analysis of acquisition procedure of painting ispresented in the following paragraphs

TheMTF tests [24] show that the duplicator use (LWPHthat is line widthpicture height range [1300 4000]) is a weakpoint The image resolution falls from 3613 LWPH (focal200mmmdashF11 lens centre) to 3055 in the same conditionat lens edge the resolution is 2171 that it means the lowestsharpness

Chromatic aberrations (CA) are well controlled at135mm and 200mm but are slightly the highest at 70mmwith an average value of 144 pixels wide open With the lensat its 200mm setting duplicator increases the number of CAsignificantly

The lens showed soft distortion characteristics in this lensclass (17 at 200mm) This problem can be corrected inprocessing phase using common software

Considering the vignetting we perform the acquisitionwith light falloff F14 to preserve sharpness We set ISO to200 for the noise reduction in taking phase

The fall of sharpness due to duplicator is the mainproblem After quality study on the snapshot part we decideto use control mask during the stitching phase

The main step of the workflow to obtain high-resolutionphotograph is the stitching phase We arrange 32 snapshotsin a macrophoto using the PTGui sw An overlap of 30is necessary to obtain an accurate stitching The final image(22537 pixel times 6433 pixel resolution 240) has a dimensionof 848MB We support the Adobe RGB 1998 colour spaceotherwise the colour spectrum in the acquisition phase andin preprocessing phase (Camera Raw) is available after thestitching phase

4 lsquolsquoCittagrave Idealersquorsquo AR Experience

The AR experience is divided into two substeps globalmuseum user localization using AR and AR painting detailsdiscovery

The first one is related to anAR tool for global localizationinside the museum based on the whole painting image thissection shows the main features of the application from theuserrsquos point of view Once the app is launched the devicecamera is activated and ready to recognize a target (accordingto the point selection framework described below) Whenframing a target image the information pop-up is shown anda button in the action bar becomes active if pressed a radaris displayed on the top left of the screen This feature showsthe user the position of the other points of interest (POIs)Each of these points is represented as amarker and a billboardcontaining the name of the painting This system shows theuser the direction to follow to reach the painting throughARFor further information on how to reach a point of interestthe user has to only tap the corresponding geometryThis willdisplay the path on the museum map from the current userposition to the selected painting

The second module is devoted to details discovery usingAR and will be deeply investigated in the following sectionand in the result section

The meaningful steps for the creation of the dUcale ARexperience are explained in the following

The whole procedure consisted of three phases that wecan summarize as the block diagram in Figure 3 shows Thethree phases are the content creation the web and the finalvisualization

41 Content Creation First of all few items of interest in thepainting have been identified such as doves architecturalelements like floor or the environment in the backgroundand all elements suggested from the historians More in deepwe decided to use the portions of the artwork which containsinteresting detail that a common visitor of the museumcould not discover by himself In this way the visitor can besuddenly instructed on the highlights of the painting


Content creation

Contentoverlay

Upload tothe channel

ARvisualization

Figure 3 The general scheme of dUcale AR demo

Figure 4 The marker less tracking creation

For the proposed applications we decided to create alimited number of items such as visual contents interactivebuttons to discover the conceived lines by the artist or avideo guide that explain some details about the mathemat-ical Renaissance and the construction of the perspectivehowever tracking images and content can be modified orupdated at anytime and it is a great advantage for themuseum managers because the museum exhibition can beeasily changed and improved

Everyone has been considered as a tracking image (alsoknown as planar marker less tracking) that is to say imagesrecognizable by the device once pointed with the cameraThen once the content mask was created for each trackingimage it has been possible to assign the content to thecorresponding image in Figure 4 This step is mandatory forthe visualization of pointed objects in an AR environment

The whole high-resolution image is used for the globalmuseum user localization using AR and paintings framed onthe mobile device camera as described before

42 Cloud and Web Service The AR and content envi-ronment are based on a cloud service ready to be usedduring the visit to the museum and ready to collect dataand services in the cultural heritage data managementThereis a significant experience and enthusiasm to participate incloud-based development from the heritage organizationsand agencies expressing their opinion in this report The lackof knowledge and skills trust and legal issues are the mainobstacles to participate for public administrations while themain legal obstacle is the fact that many companies arecharged with the governance of their data and there willoften be restrictions as to where that data may be placed andto whom it may be given This limitation has been avoided

Parameteradaptation

Double size imageNumber of scalesContrast threshold

SIFT

Figure 5 Adaptive SIFT approach Feature extraction parametersare adapted to the processed image and then the SIFT algorithm isperformed

thanks to the contribution of Mcloud a public regional cloudinfrastructure that hosts the described problem

In this project we introduced an XML standard descrip-tion using SOAP Web Services to define the portrait entity(ie ldquoCitta Idealerdquo with descriptions such as painter agelocation short history comments and audio guide) com-munication points for AR (ie tracking area virtual layerdescription and social interaction) and user behaviours (iestatistics on the use of the system interactions and ARtracking area activations)

This description is public and available for the futurestandardization of this AR interaction with CH

43 The AR Real Time Visualization and Point SelectionFramework The final result is explained as follows thecontent is available by pointing a common smartphone (ortablet) to the painting in front of the visitor The devicerecognizes the tracked image and using this image it connectsto internet getting associated images visuals and 3D shapesand then putting them into the view For this purpose amethod was proposed based on an improved SIFT extractorfor real time image that uses a robust matching developed inthe robotics field

The Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) developedby Lowe et al [25 26] is invariant to image translationscaling and rotation SIFT features are also partially invariantto illumination changes and affine 3D projection Thesefeatures have been widely used in the robot localization fieldas well as many other computer vision fields [27 28]

Even if the SIFT algorithm is invariant to scale and torotation and robust to other image transforms its maindisadvantages is that the SIFT feature description of the imageis typically large and slow to compute Consequently wecompute the image similarity using a reduced and optimizedSIFT approachwith 64 feature descriptors andwe introducedtime saving improvements by the following two main stepsadaptation of SIFT parameters to each subimage as shown inFigure 5 and fixed key point number extraction In particularthe number of scales of the original image is defined accord-ing to its dimensions and thus in some cases not all SIFTscales are necessary to be computed The following threshold


(a) (b)

Figure 6 Virtual content visualized in real time in a real test in front of the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo in Palazzo Ducale Urbino Italy

value (Tr) is also computed to define the contrast thresholdvalue of the SIFT algorithm

Tr = 119896 sdotsum

Dim119883Dim119884119894119895=0

10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816

Dim119883 sdot Dim119884

(1)

where 119896 is a scale factor Dim119883 and Dim119884 are the 119909 and 119910image dimensions 119868(119909 119910) is the intensity of the grey level onthe image and 119868(119909 119910) is the medium intensity value of theprocessed image

The contrast threshold for the SIFT implementation ofLowe is statistically defined while due to their sensitivenessto noise the low contrast key points are discarded Inour implementation the threshold is computed for eachsubimage sometimes avoiding at all the time-consumingfeature extraction process and in any cases dealing withdifferent lighting conditions

For the previously said problem and thanks to theadaptive threshold we also reduced the number of key pointsand their corresponding extraction time maintaining thesame descriptor for each key point This is a common wayof reducing the dimensions and complexity of the problemwhen the image is very distinctive and with poor perceptualaliasing

In the classical SIFT approach key points are detected bytesting each value in the DoG (Difference of Gaussians) ateach scale with the 8 surrounding values of the same scaleas well as with 9 neighbouring values in the scale above and 9neighbouring values in the scale belowThe first and last DoGscales are not examined This means 26 times119898 times 119899 comparisonsfor a DoG of size119898times 119899 taking into consideration that pointsaround a given border of each DoG are not included in thekey point detection [29]

The other novelty of this work concerns the multipointprobabilistic layer The goal is to define a way to decide whatAR interactive point should be selected when more than oneis in the current view

In order to define the best point of interest in thescene and the related AR content we made a comparisonbetween two algorithms and a dataset of real user choicesThe algorithms are winner-takes-all (WTA) models and aBayesian model with maximum a posteriori estimate (MAP)For the final implementation we used the MAP approachbased on string MAP was used as an estimator based on a

trained manual choice on the AR point of the images TheAR software to select the proposed action and to propose therelated content uses this estimator This method solves theissue of multiple points of interest in the same scene givingback a method to select one of these based on MAP actionestimations

5 Results

A first result of this work is the successful creation and thevalidation of an easy workflow for HD images The use of theldquoCitta Idealerdquo macrophotography in mobile and web-basedapplications has shown good performances of the imageobtained in our process However the methodology andequipment used remain in the field of low cost acquisitionsas demonstrated by comparisons with best market solutionsas shown in Table 2

Augmented reality interfaces perform the visualization ofthe digital contents of the artwork The interfaces combinean app based form of presentation with either AR virtualexhibitions This app allows users to reach the databasecontents by the use of a well-known interface whereas theVR and AR exhibitions let them examine virtual recon-structions of selected objects in virtual environments Thevirtual exhibitions displayed in the end-user interfaces aredynamically generated based on parameterized visualizationtemplates and the database contents as shown in Figure 6On the portrait we defined 8 different points of interest forAR detection and user content overlapping In particularwe tested image-based contents videos (with transparentbackground) shapes with text and interactive buttons tocope with social network activities and share contents fromthe AR application Figure 7 shows the mobile applicationworking in front of the real painting

All test performed in the real scenario in different daytimeand also using different reproductions of the famous paintingdemonstrated a great robustness of the proposed approacheven if compared with commercial AR products During thetesting phase we did not observe false positive and all pointsof interest in the portrait were correctly detected

It is important to emphasize that the entire demohas beenperformed over the real painting the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo directly inthe exhibition hall of the museum


Table 2 Equipment for HD acquisition and comparison with market solution

Our equipment CostsinfoMarket equipment

Best market solutions(HD)

Costsinfo

Camera Nikon D70012Mp 200000C Nikon D3X

25Mp 690000C

Lenses 70-20028G ED VR AF S NIKKOR | focalduplicator X2-TC20E-III 250000C Lenses 6004 ED-IF

AF S II NIKKOR| 1000000C

Pointing panohead gigapan and paper grid 80000C Pointing Clauss GianRodeon

Dedicatedhardware

Data acquisition and storage On board Data acquisition andstorage

Nikon CameraControl Pro 2

Preprocessing images Camera raw Preprocessing images Nikon CaptureNX2

Postprocessing Photoshopptgui zoomify Postprocessing Dedicated sw

Data processing Number 1 pc Number 3 pcDpi on the real 240mdash1 1 Dpi on the real 300mdash1 1

Figure 7 Image and text based point of interest in the AR application In particular we tested image-based contents videos (with transparentbackground) and shapes with text and interactive buttons to cope with social network activities and share contents from the AR application

51 Users Test In order to know the characteristics of theinterviewed sample preliminary questions relating to ageacademic qualifications work and the use of technology ingeneral were initially asked

The system was tested on 15 different human subjectswith age between 22 and 48 Five subjects have a high schoolacademic qualification and they are students The other 10subjects have a university academic qualification and theyare workers 2 are self-employed and 8 are salaried workers(employed)

On the total number 5 subjects are experts about usingnew technologies and 10 have good skills Nine subjects spendtime surfing the net each day more than five hours 4 more

than one hour and less than five hours and 2 less than onehour 14 subjects have a smartphone for more than one yearand 1 does not have a smartphone Moreover 9 subjects havea tablet and the other 6 do not have a tablet

Table 3 lists the answers of the users concerning the ldquoCittaIdealerdquo application Observing the answers we can deduceconsidering that the instruction level of the respondents ismedium-high and they are skilled in the use of technologyeven if they most rarely visit a museum that the app wasgreatly appreciated by the users They have generally foundthat the application is clear intuitive and very simple to use

In addition we must also emphasize that it was the firsttime for 9 subjects to use AR application while the remaining


Table 3 Usersrsquo answers related to the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo app

A lot Quite A little Not at allDid you already know the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo painting 3 (20) 3 (20) 4 (27) 5 (33)Has using the app been simple and intuitive 4 (27) 11 (73) 0 (0) 0 (0)Do you feel that the content is exposed clearly 4 (27) 9 (60) 2 (13) 0 (0)Did you find difficulties approaching the AR 0 (0) 2 (13) 9 (60) 4 (27)Did you appreciate the graphic design of the app 3 (20) 12 (80) 0 (0) 0 (0)Do you think the app could replace an audio guide or a paper guide 3 (20) 10 (67) 2 (13) 0 (0)

6 had already used AR application So 7 users see the ARsection of the application as a positive tool that increasesthe art workrsquos attractiveness while 7 users consider theAR section as a useful tool to the understanding of themain features of the painting and only 1 declares that thesection is an amusing tool but needs to improve becauseit provides unsatisfactory information However 10 usersconsider visiting the museum with a tablet a very pleasantexperience while 5 users think that it is a very involvingexperience

Moreover the 67 of the users has appreciated the ARsection 27 has appreciated the HD section and finally 6has appreciated the content and organization of static pagesFinally themajority of users (60) retain the development ofsimilar applications for other works of art in the museum canbe useful but not essential while the other 40 retain thatsimilar applications are a necessary resource

6 Conclusions and Future Works

The presented solution for ARmuseum exhibition of culturalcontents enables museums to become an enjoining place tospend time Web pages and augmented reality techniquesare needful in order to capture the attention of the visitorbecoming an attractive tool for helping the visitor to do anactive vision and to identify important facts visiting themuseum with a new insight

Simply by pointing a handheld device the AR terminalmust support visitors to understand better the artwork thatthey contemplate

Due to the aforementioned arguments augmented realityhas become an efficient automatic and playful methodtowards the appreciation and understandings of tangible andintangible cultural heritage The users tests described in theprevious paragraph prove that such a technologywill enhancethe approach of a growing public to the museums The testswere intentionally carried out over users of any age or socialbackground in order to simulate a typical journey inside themuseum for both experts and nonexperts

Although AR is a growing technology in many fields thissort ofmobile apps applied to artworks is still broadlymissingin the futurewe guess to evaluate ourwork also in comparisonwith other similar tools

Future works in the dUcale project include the design ofan ad hoc application in which a large number of servicesare dedicated to the visitors Thus starting from the ticket

reservation the visitor is tempted to use his own deviceas the main instrument for the entire visit The applicationcould also include a virtual route guidance that could guidethe visitor along the museum and it would be much moreinteresting if he could plan the visit before choosing priorwhat to see or what to study in deep

Finally a next major step will be to develop and increasethe number of image tracking for handheld devices directlyfrom this app

In our opinion a main development for the ldquoCitta Idealerdquoapp is to carry out experimental user tests which examinethe engagement and emotional response of visitors Weexpect that the Urbinorsquos Ducal Palace will participate to thedebate recently engaged among internationalmuseum criticscurators and neuroscientists [1]

Shelley Bernstein the Chief of Technology at the Brook-lynMuseumof Art [30] wrote that ldquoexperimentationwithoutperfection is a good thingrdquo and that ldquoit is our responsibilitycollectively to try new approaches and provide asmany entrypoints into content and the museum as possiblerdquo The maingoal is to examine this entry points and to take advantage ofnew media tools in museum management The cloud servicewill be able to monitor evaluate and easily modify tools andapplications

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interestsregarding the publication of this paper

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the Soprintendenzaper I Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche(SBSAE Marche) and Maria Rosaria Valazzi for allowing thehigh-resolution acquisition of Citta Ideale painting and forcollaborating in the whole ldquodUcalerdquo project The HR imagewas performed by Gianni Plescia (Univpm) and the appinterface was designed by Alessia Vitturini

References

[1] M Ott and F Pozzi ldquoTowards a new era for cultural heritageeducation discussing the role of ICTrdquo Computers in HumanBehavior vol 27 no 4 pp 1365ndash1371 2011


[2] S Sylaiou K Mania A Karoulis and M White ldquoExploringthe relationship between presence and enjoyment in a virtualmuseumrdquo International Journal of Human-Computer Studiesvol 68 no 5 pp 243ndash253 2010

[3] L Mazzoli ldquoQuando la rete diventa poprdquo in Network Effect LMazzoli Ed pp 3ndash20 Codice Turin Italy 2009

[4] W Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction Penguin London UK 2008

[5] L Mazzoli Il Patchwork Mediale Franco Angeli Milano Italy2012

[6] M Heilig ldquoSensorama simulatorrdquo US Patent 3050870A 1962[7] I E Sutherland ldquoSketchpad-A man-machine graphical com-

munication systemrdquo in Proceedings of the Spring Joint ComputerConference Detroit Michigan May 1963 Spartan WashingtonDC USA 1964

[8] I E Sutherland ldquoTheultimate displayrdquo inProceedings of the IFIPCongress pp 506ndash508 1965

[9] M Krueger T Gionfriddo and K Hinrichsen ldquoVideoplace -an artificial realityrdquo in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference onHuman Factors in Computing Systems vol 16 no 4 pp 35ndash401985

[10] H Kato and M Billinghurst ldquoMarker tracking and HMDcalibration for a video-based augmented realityrdquo in Proceedingsof the 2nd InternationalWorkshop on Augmented Reality (IWARrsquo99) pp 85ndash94 San Francisco Calif USA October 1999

[11] D Eggert D Hucker and V Paelke Augmented Reality Visual-ization of Archeological Data Lecture Notes in Geoinformationand Cartography 2014

[12] E Eftaxopoulos A Vasilakis and I Fudos ldquoAR-TagBrowseannotating and browsing 3D objects on mobile devicesrdquo inEurographics 2014 M Paulin and C Dachsbacher Eds 2014

[13] R Cucchiara andA del Bimbo ldquoVisions for augmented culturalheritage experiencerdquo IEEE Multimedia vol 21 no 1 pp 74ndash822014

[14] A Damala I Marchal and P Houlier ldquoMerging augmentedreality based features inmobile multimedia museum guidesrdquo inProceedings of the 21st International CIPA Symposium AthensGreece October 2007

[15] D Stricker J Karigiannis T Ioannis T Gleue andN IoannidisldquoAugmented reality for visitors of cultural heritage sitesrdquo inProceedings of the International Conference on Artistic Culturaland Scientific Aspects of Experimental Media Spaces (CAST rsquo01)Bonn Germany September 2001

[16] G PapagiannakisM Ponder TMolet et al ldquoLIFEPLUS revivalof life in ancient Pompeii virtual systems and multimediardquoin Proceedings of the Virtual Heritage Media Art and CreativeTechnology Media and VR Technology Wireless Life and CultureVirtual Medicine (VSMM rsquo02) Gyeongju Republic of KoreaSeptember 2002

[17] R Wojciechowski K Walczak M White and W CellaryldquoBuilding virtual and augmented reality museum exhibitionsrdquoin Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on 3D WebTechnology pp 135ndash144 April 2004

[18] TMiyashita PMeier T Tachikawa et al ldquoAn augmented realitymuseum guiderdquo in Proceedings of the 7th IEEE InternationalSymposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR rsquo08) pp103ndash106 September 2008

[19] S Sauer K Osswald S Gobel A Feix R Zumack andA Hoffmann ldquoEdutainment environments A field report onDinoHunter technologies methods and evaluation resultsrdquo inMuseum and the Web 2004

[20] A Damala P Cubaud A Bationo P Houlier and I MarchalldquoBridging the gap between the digital and the physical designand evaluation of a mobile augmented reality guide for themuseum visitrdquo in Proceedings of the 3rd International Confer-ence on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts(DIMEA rsquo08) pp 120ndash127 September 2008

[21] KMartinez J Cupitt andD R Saunders ldquoHigh-resolution col-orimetric imaging of paintingsrdquo in Proceedings of the SPIE 1901Cameras Scanners and Image Acquisition Systems Conferencevol 25 pp 28ndash41 1993

[22] C Corsi M Faietti M Gaiani I Rossi and M ZancolichldquoTowards a unified and fast workflow for fine art drawingcollection acquisitionrdquo in Proceedings of the Electronic Imagingamp the Visual Arts (EVA rsquo11) pp 76ndash81 BOLOGNA PitagoraEditrice Florence Italy May 2011

[23] P Clini M R Valazzi R Quattrini A V Razionale G Plesciaand L Sagone ldquoTecniche speditive per la realta aumentatanellrsquoanalisi comunicazione e musealizzazione del patrimoniostorico artistico La citta Ideale di Urbinordquo in Colore e col-orimetria contributi multidisciplinari vol VIII A pp 23ndash30MAGGIOLI EDITORE 2012

[24] L Stroebel J Compton I Current and R Zakia Fondamenti diFotografia Materiali e Processi Zanichelli Bologna Italy 1993

[25] S Se D Lowe and J Little ldquoVision-based mobile robotlocalization and mapping using scale-invariant featuresrdquo inProceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Roboticsand Automation (ICRA rsquo01) pp 2051ndash2058 Seoul Republic ofKorea May 2001

[26] D G Lowe ldquoDistinctive image features from scale-invariantkeypointsrdquo International Journal of Computer Vision vol 60 no2 pp 91ndash110 2004

[27] P Zingaretti and E Frontoni ldquoAppearance-based localization inpartially explored environmentsrdquo IEEE Robotics and Automa-tion Magazine vol 13 no 1 pp 59ndash68 2006

[28] E Frontoni P Zingaretti A Mancini and F Caponetti ldquoFastmobile robot localization using low cost sensorsrdquo in Proceedingsof the IFAC Symposium on Robotics and Control (SYROCO rsquo06)363 p 358 Bologna Italy September 2006

[29] E Frontoni A Mancini and P Zingaretti ldquoFeature groupmatching a novel method to filter out incorrect local featurematchingsrdquo International Journal of Pattern Recognition andArtificial Intelligence vol 28 no 5 2014

[30] A Huffington 2010 httpwwwhuffingtonpostcomarianna-huffingtonmuseums-20-what-happens-w b 801372html

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19th (The Art Newspaper) with some experimentation inmobile apps only recently Our project wants to introducean ldquoExplore-Collect-Sharerdquo approach [5] in a mobile ARenvironment that it increases museum attractiveness and itallows easy content management for public cultural insti-tutions very fragmented in Italian panorama This projectis conducted by the Soprintendenza per I Beni StoriciArtistici ed Etnoantropologici delleMarche (SBSAEMarche)Universita Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) Universitadi Urbino (Uniurb) and Alma Mater Studiorum Universitadi Bologna (Unibo) The demo within ldquodUcalerdquo projectpresented here experiments ICT solutions for the PalazzoDucale of Urbino and its museum and explores the potentialof image-based systems (IBS) as a technical platform forcreating a connection between technology and setting in a usesituation

The overall goal of our research is to provide to culturalinstitutions the best practices efficiently on low budgets (adetailed comparison with state of the art is reported in theresult section) Therefore we present a low cost method forhigh-resolution acquisition of paintings that is used as abase of knowledge for an image that uses an AR approachThe proposed methodology consists of an improved SIFTextractor for real time image using a robust matching Theother novelty of this work is themultipoint probabilistic layerExperimental results demonstrated the robustness of theproposed approach with extensive use of the AR applicationin front of the ldquoCitta Idealerdquo painting Users tests in thereal scenario were also conducted to prove the usability andensure a good user experience

The paper is organized as follow Section 2 proposes areview on AR techniques applied to digital cultural heritageSection 3 describes the high-resolution acquisition processSection 4 goes deeply inside the proposed image based ARmethodology and finally in Sections 5 and 6 qualitativeresults and user test results and a comparison of the currentsolution with state of the art and relative costs are presentedtogether with conclusions and future works

2 Augmented Reality (AR)

21 Related Work The 1960 can be considered the originof AR in particular thanks to the cinematography whenMorton Heilig created Sensorama [6] a system that madethe viewing experience immersive by enhancing the sensorialperception of the reality Afterwards the computer scientistSutherland created the first virtual reality and augmentedreality head-mounted display system [7 8] Then in 1975Krueger et al realized the Videoplace [9] the first system ofvirtual reality (VR) that gave the user the sensation to interactwith the virtual objects although the term VR was coinedonly in 1989 with the realization of the first 3D software Butit is only in the 90s that the VR became ARThe difference isthat if before the user worked into an environment achievedby a computer now the information comes out from thedevice thanks to the overlapping of digital contents

The first AR software is ARToolKit by Kato andBillinghurst [10] where using the video tracking it is

possible to place a virtual camera in the same point of view ofthe observer and starting from this put contents in overlay

During the year 2000 augmented reality technology hasalready reached a high degree of development thereafterthis system has been introduced into applications such asnavigation medicine urban environment education andcultural heritage

The mobile application augmented reality for archaeo-logical content ARAC Maps [11] based on commerciallyavailable devices with android operating system intends toaugment archaeological paper maps using 3D models andother interactive approaches

Another recent application for mobile devices is AR-TagBrowse [12] that allows tagging and browsing virtual 3Dobjects that pop up in a scene observed by a mobile cameraThe view is interactive and a user can also inserts notes forspecific parts of the object

Also in Italy there are similar projects launched bythe Italian Ministry of University and Regional Govern-ments that implement augmented experiences For exampleTell MeWhere project [13] designed by the University ofModena and Reggio Emilia realizes a system to offer aug-mented experiences to visitors of the Enzo FerrariMuseum inModena Using smartphones and glass cameras this systemrecognizes visitor gestures and provides car details so theycan learn more about the luxury cars Other projects DICETand SMST are launched in Italy in 2013 with the commonaim to augment the experience of visitors with an increasedinteractivity and connectivity [13]

Given the above we can summarizeAR as the enrichmentof the sensorial understanding through a series of digital orcomputer-generated contents which enhance the knowledgeof the environment or objects with artificial informationoverlaid ldquoaboverdquo a screen

Augmented reality (AR) is the phenomenon of addingvirtual elements into our physical reality allowing the visitorsto communicate directly with the exhibitions

22 Cultural Heritage AR Virtual and augmented realitytechnologies have almost invaded many disciplines alsothose not usually related to computer science In fact ARtechnologies have beenwidely adopted in the domains ofmil-itary and medical training urban planning and architecturesuch as for industrial maintenance work (eg in automotiveand aerospace industry) and entertainment Nevertheless anadditional field of application is the furnishing in particularthe interior design and retail solution Though late from thecultural heritage point of view a large number of relatedresearches has been performed in the recent years [14]An example is the Archiguide this system allows the userto experience a VR world by realizing computer-generated3D reconstructions of ruined sites always maintaining himin the ldquoreal worldrdquo [15] Lifeplus is another of AR appliedto historical and archaeological sites using both handhelddevices on site displays [16] Particularly significant is theexample of Arco project which proposes to rebuild themuseum collection or at least part of it in a virtual way

This is very important because for the first time theproblem how to expose the entire collection of the museum























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Photoshop


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Overlap gt30


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Content creation

Contentoverlay


ARvisualization







Parameteradaptation


SIFT









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Dim119883Dim119884119894119895=0

10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816


(1)








5 Results









Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation































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and vignetting

Photoshop


panorama stitching

Overlap gt30


ZoomifyTessellation

pyramid image



















Content creation

Contentoverlay


ARvisualization







Parameteradaptation


SIFT









(a) (b)



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10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816


(1)








5 Results









Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation












color check



and vignetting

Photoshop


panorama stitching

Overlap gt30


ZoomifyTessellation

pyramid image



















Content creation

Contentoverlay


ARvisualization







Parameteradaptation


SIFT









(a) (b)



Tr = 119896 sdotsum

Dim119883Dim119884119894119895=0

10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816


(1)








5 Results









Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation










Content creation

Contentoverlay


ARvisualization







Parameteradaptation


SIFT









(a) (b)



Tr = 119896 sdotsum

Dim119883Dim119884119894119895=0

10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816


(1)








5 Results









Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation










(a) (b)



Tr = 119896 sdotsum

Dim119883Dim119884119894119895=0

10038161003816100381610038161003816119868 (119909119894 119910119895) minus 119868 (119909

119894 119910119895)

10038161003816100381610038161003816


(1)








5 Results









Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation













Costsinfo


25Mp 690000C




Dedicatedhardware






























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation


























Acknowledgments


References


































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation









































RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation











RoboticsJournal of





Journal of



RotatingMachinery





VLSI Design



Shock and Vibration







Journal of



Volume 2014


SensorsJournal of





Propagation









Documents

Research Article Augmented Reality Experience: From High ...downloads.hindawi.com/journals/am/2014/597476.pdfdigital storytelling. In this way, a speci c goal of the project becomes