The project includes three main objectives:
Objective 1: Develop and integrate a series of tools that will enable the creation of interactive and exciting Virtual Museums by both professionals and non-specialist end users.
The Project will develop collaborative authoring tools based on “cloud computing” technologies for the management of knowledge related to works of art (2D, 3D models, digital objects, supplementary multimedia content, textual information, audio narrations, etc.). The tool will provide the ability to produce narratives with rich connections to artwork within a story. The VR-studio will be available for the collaborative creation of Virtual Museums and will include authoring tools for 3D environments and technical solutions through advanced visualization techniques to facilitate the augmented presentation of cultural content. Multimodal interaction with physical and digital works will be supported by providing alternative ways of viewing information through mobile devices as well as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. For this purpose, new navigation techniques such as personalized narration, and self-adaptive guidance will be used.
Objective 2: Create a knowledge representation model for narratives and their associations with artworks, periods, styles, and artists. Using the model to produce narratives.
The project will create a model of knowledge representation and narratives appropriately structured to create stories. In addition, the Project will address multilingualism issues by supporting: (a) multiple languages at the ontology level, (b) integration of machine translation services and processing services based on “cloud computing” technologies to simplify the translation process, (c) support of community translations users and d) translation support during the visit by users, who will be able to suggest translations for untranslated content. Narratives will be linked to the museum’s objects and the ability to interface with linked data repositories will be provided.
Objective 3: Produce Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality applications to present narratives and enhance personalized user interaction with Virtual Museums.
The Project will develop a Virtual Reality platform to significantly improve the “digital encounter” with cultural objects. In addition, it will utilize the technologies of the Pervasive Intelligence Program of IP-ITE to create mixed reality experiences with cultural content. Finally, Noveltech’s know-how will be used to provide personalized interactive services via the internet (before and after the visit), but also with the use of smart mobile devices inside the museums (during the visit). The combination of these technologies will lead to a new form of Virtual Museum that the visitor can experience multimodally before, during and after their visit.
