Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Augmented reality applications for Cultural Heritage have been implemented in the last years. The use of AR is currently diffused for many purposes, from technical and managing activities to dissemination. On the communication side, the main potential of such approach is the extension of human sight as to cover simultaneously the current situation of a point of interest (monuments, archaeological sites, artifacts, etc.) and the reconstruction of its ancient condition in different historical periods. Moreover, it allows to compare different possible hypotheses and evaluate the reliability of each of them in the general context of the known data. Despite the current limits of AR (due to the approximation in device positioning), which still influence the use of applications for mobile use, such technology is very promising in the fields of tourism, education, and entertainment; it allows to enrich 3D scenarios with different types of content. In the next future, it is reasonable to imagine a huge amount of information, in different formats, potentially reachable by people simply having a look at the remains of the ancient past and choosing their favorite topics. At the same time, the connection of AR with other emerging technological infrastructures (such as IoT) will allow to collect, view, and manage simultaneously lots of real-time diagnostic data in the same framework. This will foster the research activity toward the definition of new communication metaphors and cognitive solutions.