In this article, the challenges facing museums to offer more ways to provide information for learning have been reviewed. The use of social robotics has been explored within a museum setting, for guiding tours as well as for learning heritage languages and cultures. The article focuses on the design and development of two social robots for a heritage museum. The first robot is a virtual human character mounted on a mobile robotic platform. It has been implemented to serve as a museum guide. The second robot is a humanoid. It is programmed for bilingualism, which injected elements of culture learning and education. The objective was to develop robots as well as robotic and virtual reality applications primarily, and to explore the usability of these technologies in a heritage museum. The implemented robots have been deployed to validate the development work and to evaluate the feasibility of using these robots for cultural education among young children. Finally, we discuss our deployment experiences and offer suggestions for future work to improve the viability of the robots for a more elaborated deployment at public museums.

The implementation of 3D virtual reality (VR) environments to represent human culture and heritage has been growing during the last two decades as a result of information and communication technologies (ICT) development. Precisely, regarding virtual heritage development, some weaknesses have been detected such as “lifeless“ environments lacking interaction, and research still under development on learning assessment. In this article, a VR environment is presented, through users taking a virtual tour visiting some elements of cultural heritage of the island of San Andrés, Colombia. In the tour, users participate in a 3D VR environment, answering questions and learning about the cultural heritage of the island. Also, the usability of the VR environment is assessed through SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) standard ISO9241-11 evaluating aspects such as usefulness and learnability. The results demonstrate that with the implementation of a VR environment about heritage, the users achieved optimum performance with an 80% average of correct answers and a high correlation between learning and the usability of the 3D VR environment.

The existing 3D modeling studies of Chinese ancient architecture are mostly procedure driven and rely on fixed construction rules. Therefore, these methods have limited applications in virtual reality (VR) engineering. We propose a data-driven approach to synthesize 3D models from existing 3D data that provides more flexibility and fills the gap between academic studies and VR engineering. First, 3D architecture models were preprocessed and decomposed into components, and the components were clustered by their geometric features. Second, a Bayesian network was generated by learning from the dataset to represent the internal relationships between the architectural components. Third, the inference results of the trained network were utilized to generate a reasonable relationship matching to support the synthesis of the structural components. The proposed method can be used in 3D content creation for VR development and directly supports VR applications in practice.

An industrial heritage provides one of the most important records of urban development and of the progress of human civilization in the last two centuries. Monumental industrial buildings reflect extraordinary technical and economic development and progress in science and technology. Even after the termination of their original function, industrial heritage buildings and equipment, along with their architecture, still participate in a significant way in the atmosphere of many cities. The research process in our study used the methods of industrial archaeology. In combination with the identified preserved and still valuable parts of the building and preserved original equipment and archival plans, it was possible to reconstruct the hypothetical virtual appearance of the historical monument. For this purpose, the article examines the case study: virtual reality reconstruction of the Old Power Plant in the city of Piešt’any. The contribution of a brief experience in the VR scene of Machinery Hall in the exhibition with its high immersion, located in the historical environment of the original Machinery Hall, had an educational effect (understanding by experience), bringing out the look and functionality of the lost industrial heritage. This effect appears to be an appropriate and meaningful use of VR in practice.

In this article, we describe a project on the use of Virtual Reality Continuum (VRC) for applications in culture and heritage. Haw Par Villa, a local heritage site in Singapore, is selected to demonstrate the entire process of VRC-enhanced digitization from laser scanning to 3D mapping and to 3D prototyping, using Madam Snake White as an example. The objective of the research is to investigate an effective and integrated solution to developing VRC applications for culture and heritage. Efforts are made for fidelity in the 3D modeling of the existing heritage for multiple applications, with the aim to popularize them in a simple and effective manner. In particular, in the case of Madam Snake White, we investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of digitization, 3D mapping, and 3D printing. We also discuss the use of online and interactive Madam Snake White as VRC heritage. A small group of volunteers were invited to a trial and their feedback was positive. Future work includes the application of VRC-enabled heritage for humanities education in local schools.

Crowd simulation addresses algorithmic approaches to steering, navigation, perception, and behavioral models. Significant progress has been achieved in modeling interactions between agents and the environment to avoid collisions, exploit empirical local decision data, and plan efficient paths to goals. We address a relatively unexplored dimension of virtual human behavior: thermal perception, comfort, and appropriate behavioral responses. Thermal comfort is associated with the ambient environment, agent density factors, and interpersonal thermal feedback. A key feature of our approach is the temporal integration of both thermal exposure and occupant density to directly influence agent movements and behaviors (e.g., clothing changes) to increase thermal comfort. Empirical thermal comfort models are incorporated as a validation basis. Simple heat transfer models are used to model environment, agent, and interpersonal heat exchange. Our model’s generality makes it applicable to any existing crowd steering algorithm as it adds additional integrative terms to any cost function. Examples illustrate distinctive emergent behaviors such as balancing agent density with thermal comfort, hysteresis in responding to localized or brief thermal events, and discomfort and likely injury produced by extreme packing densities.

Virtual and augmented reality technologies are increasingly utilized by public-facing galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) institutions to convey both heritage and contemporary stories, information, and experiences. However, within these media, the visitors are often overwhelmed by the virtual environment, resulting in the cultural heritage content being pushed to the background. In this article, we present the alternating reality (AltR) narrative that supports the communication of cultural heritage as an interweaving experience that alternates between real and virtual environments. AltR allows both the cultural heritage content and digital technology to play an equal role in augmenting, highlighting, or explicating each other and conveying a shared narrative to the visitors of GLAM institutions. We introduce the AltR experience through an exhibition highlighting the physical replica and contemporary reimagining of one of Walter and Marion Griffin’s buildings. We conducted a study of the AltR experience during the exhibition using a low-cost virtual reality cardboard viewer that lends itself to an intuitive transition between the two environments. The findings showed that the interweaving experiences between the physical replica of cultural heritage and its virtual reimagining allows the visitors to draw the connection between the two sources of information. The narrative is created and controlled by the visitors, leading to an enjoyable experience. Finally, we reflect on the design implications of an AltR narrative for cultural heritage applications derived from the findings of the study.

Shared between Human-Computer Interaction and Cultural Heritage, the concept of Cultural Presence may provide an encompassing theoretical and methodological framework for Virtual Archaeology. The factors underlying presence have been extensively investigated, by means of both particular analyses as well as general statistical approaches. Yet, Cultural Presence has mostly been defined theoretically, and there are no global empirical examinations of it. The goal of this study is to verify the validity of the concept and to understand its underlying factors in the field of Virtual Archaeology. To that end we established an operational definition of Cultural Presence, we built a virtual reconstruction of an archaeological site based on it, and we evaluated the environment by means of self-reports and exploratory factor analysis. The general conclusion is that the concept of Cultural Presence is sound and composed of three main factors (cultural representation and engagement, social presence, and communicational aspects of technology); yet, it is not universal, but influenced by purpose and demographic variables.

In this article, we present our development of a virtual reality simulation of sailing on the Hōkūle‘a, a Polynesian double-hulled sailing canoe built in Hawai‘i in 1974, which completed its worldwide journey in 2017. The construction and sailing of this vessel is of significant importance to the Hawaiian cultural renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s; of particular relevance is Hawaiian wayfinding, the cultural practice of navigating across the open ocean to a destination without the use of maps or modern navigation instruments. By developing the simulation, we aimed to assist in the cultural preservation of the star navigation portion of Hawaiian wayfinding techniques, and to help to educate future generations of non-instrument navigators. The first implementation of Kilo Hōkū as a cultural heritage project in virtual reality was to test its viability as a tool for Modern Hawaiian wayfinders to use in classroom instruction, and its realism as an accurate reproduction of the Hōkūle‘a’s sailing experience. The reaction to the simulation from current practicing Modern Hawaiian wayfinders was positive, and indicates that further study is warranted in testing the efficacy of the simulation for teaching Hawaiian wayfinding to future navigators, as well as preserving and spreading knowledge of Hōkūle‘a and of Modern Hawaiian wayfinding beyond Hawai‘i.

This article presents a roaming system of Han Chang’an City, with both virtual reality (VR) technology and information recommendation technology. Nowadays, some new research issues in the cultural heritage domain can be achieved with the rapid development of VR technology. The ancient site of Han Chang’an City, as one of the most valuable and significant cultural heritages in China, attracts more and more attention around the world. To let more people understand Han Chang’an City and reproduce its beauty, in this article, we propose a virtual roaming system combined with information recommendation technology. First, Unity3D is selected as the three-dimensional platform to design the scenario model of Han Chang’ an City, and the virtual scene is reconstructed with VR technology, according to real historical data; then, the dynamic information recommendation module is designed to recommend hot topic information and personalized information. The former is obtained through web crawlers, including the latest released news related to Han Chang’an City for users. The latter is generated by the proposed hybrid recommendation algorithm, which combines explicit and implicit feedback. The performance of the proposed algorithm is validated on two datasets. Finally, we show some results of our system test. Our proposed system is released online now, and users can wander in the scene any time.

Olfactory research in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) have often examined the addition of scent as part of the environment or atmosphere that act as experimental stimuli. There appears to be a lack of research on the influence of virtual foods in IVEs on human satiation. Studies based on situational cues or self-perception theory provide support for the hypothesis that touching and smelling a virtual food item may lead to increased consumption as a result of modeling expected behavior. On the other hand, studies grounded in embodied cognition suggest that satiation may take place as a result of mental simulation that resembles actual consumption behavior. In this preliminary study, we sought to explore the effects of haptic and olfactory cues through virtual food on human satiation and eating behavior. In our study, 101 participants took part in a 2 (touch: present vs absent) × 2 (scent: present vs absent) experiment where they interacted with a donut in an IVE. Findings showed that participants in the touch and scent present conditions ate significantly fewer donuts than those who were not exposed to these cues, and reported higher satiation as compared to their counterparts. However, findings were less clear with respect to participants who received both haptic and olfactory cues. As a whole, results provide preliminary support for satiation effects as a result of sensory simulation.

In this article, we present a novel, multi-user, virtual reality environment for the interactive, collaborative 3D analysis of large 3D scans and the technical advancements that were necessary to build it: a multi-view rendering system for large 3D point clouds, a suitable display infrastructure, and a suite of collaborative 3D interaction techniques. The cultural heritage site of Valcamonica in Italy with its large collection of prehistoric rock-art served as an exemplary use case for evaluation. The results show that our output-sensitive level-of-detail rendering system is capable of visualizing a 3D dataset with an aggregate size of more than 14 billion points at interactive frame rates. The system design in this exemplar application results from close exchange with a small group of potential users: archaeologists with expertise in rockart. The system allows them to explore the prehistoric art and its spatial context with highly realistic appearance. A set of dedicated interaction techniques was developed to facilitate collaborative visual analysis. A multi-display workspace supports the immediate comparison of geographically distributed artifacts. An expert review of the final demonstrator confirmed the potential for added value in rock-art research and the usability of our collaborative interaction techniques.

The EvoluSon project proposes an immersive experience where the spectator explores an interactive visual and musical representation of the main periods of the history of Western music. The musical content is constituted of original musical compositions based on the theme of Bach’s Art of Fugue to illustrate the eight main musical eras from Antiquity to the contemporary epoch. The EvoluSon project contributes at the same time to the usage of VR for intangible culture representation and to interactive digital art that puts the user at the center of the experience. The EvoluSon project focuses on music through a presentation of the history of Western music, and uses virtual reality to valorize the different pieces through the ages. The user is immersed in a coherent visual and sound environment and can interact with both modalities. This project is the result of collaboration between a computer science research laboratory and a research laboratory on art and music. It was first presented to a public event on science and music organized by the computer science research laboratory.

In a bilateral teleoperation system, discrete-time implementation of the controller can cause performance degradation. This is due to a well-known stability-imposed upper bound on the product of the discrete-time controller's gain and the sampling period. In this article, for a bilateral teleoperation system, a continuous-time controller based on a Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) is deployed and compared in terms of performance with its discrete-time counterpart. Experimental results show that, unlike the discrete-time controller, the FPAA-based controller helps the human user complete teleoperation tasks that require high controller gains such as when a large impedance needs to be displayed against the user's hand. Also, an experimental object stiffness discrimination study shows that large sampling periods, necessitating low control gains for maintaining stability, lead to unacceptable task performance by the user; however, the users show an improved ability to discriminate the various objects if the teleoperation controller is implemented using an FPAA.

The simulation of human behaviors in virtual environments has many applications. In many of these applications, situations arise in which the user has a face-to-face interaction with a virtual agent. In this work, we present an approach for multi-agent navigation that facilitates a face-to-face interaction between a real user and a virtual agent that is part of a virtual crowd. In order to predict whether the real user is approaching a virtual agent to have a face-to-face interaction or not, we describe a model of approach behavior for virtual agents. We present a novel interaction velocity prediction (IVP) algorithm that is combined with human body motion synthesis constraints and facial actions to improve the behavioral realism of virtual agents. We combine these techniques with full-body virtual crowd simulation and evaluate their benefits by conducting a user study using Oculus HMD in an immersive environment. Results of this user study indicate that the virtual agents using our interaction algorithms appear more responsive and are able to elicit more reaction from the users. Our techniques thus enable face-to-face interactions between a real user and a virtual agent and improve the sense of presence observed by the user.

We have previously investigated the effectiveness of a custom-built virtual environment in assisting training of a ventriculostomy procedure, which is a commonly performed procedure by a neurosurgeon and a core task for trainee surgeons. The training tool (called VCath) was initially developed as a low-fidelity app for a tablet platform to provide easy access and availability to trainees. Subsequently, we have developed a high-fidelity version of VCath that uses a stereoscopic display to immerse the trainee in the virtual environment. This article reports on two studies that have been carried out to compare the low- and high-fidelity versions of VCath, particularly to assess the value of stereoscopy. Study 1 was conducted at the second annual boot camp organized for all year-one trainees in neurosurgery in the UK. Study 2 was performed on lay people, with no surgical experience. Our hypothesis was that using stereoscopy in the training task would be beneficial. Results from Study 1 demonstrated that performance improved for both the control group and the group trained with the tablet version of VCath. The group trained on the high-fidelity version of VCath with a stereoscopic display showed no performance improvement. The indication is that our hypothesis is false. In Study 2, six different conditions were investigated that covered the use of training with VCath on a tablet, a mono display at two different sizes, a stereo display at two different sizes, and a control group who received no training. Results from this study with lay people show that stereoscopy can make a significant improvement to the accuracy of needle placement. The possible reasons for these results and the apparent contradiction between the two studies are discussed.

Dynamic projection mapping (DPM) is a type of projection-based augmented reality that aligns projected content with a moving physical object. In order to be able to adjust the projection to fast motions of moving objects, DPM requires high-speed visual feedback. An option to reduce the temporal delay of adjusting the projection to imperceptible levels is to use mirror-based high-speed optical axis controllers. However, using such controllers for capturing visual feedback requires a sufficient amount of illumination of the moving object. This leads to a trade-off between tracking stability and quality of projection content. In this article, we propose a system that combines mirror-based high-speed tracking with using a retroreflective background. The proposed tracking technique observes the silhouette of the target object by episcopic illumination and is robust against illumination changes. It also maintains high-speed, accident-avoidant tracking by performing background subtraction in an active vision system and employing an adaptive windows technique. This allows us to create a DPM with an imperceptible temporal delay, high tracking stability and high visual quality. We analyze the proposed system regarding the visual quality of the retroreflective background, the tracking stability under illumination and disturbance conditions, and the visual consistency relative to delay in the presence of pose estimation. In addition, we demonstrate application scenarios for the proposed DPM system.

The present study aims (a) to translate and adapt the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) to the Portuguese context (semantic equivalence/ conceptual and content validity) and (b) to examine its psychometric properties (reliability and factorial validity). The sample consisted of 478 subjects (285 males and 193 females). The fidelity of the factors varied between 0.53 and 0.83. The confirmatory factor analysis results produced a 14-item version of IPQ-PT, accepting covariance between residual errors of some items of the instrument, as the best structural representation of the data analyzed. The CFA was conducted based on a three-variable model. The fit indexes obtained were X 2 / df = 2.647, GFI = .948, CFI = .941, RSMEA = .059, and AIC = 254. These values demonstrate that the proposed Portuguese translation of the IPQ maintains its original validity, demonstrating it to be a robust questionnaire to measure the sense of presence in virtual reality studies. It is therefore recommended for use in presence research when using Portuguese samples.

This article reports on the EU project ExCITE with specific focus on the technical development of the telepresence platform over a period of 42 months. The aim of the project was to assess the robustness and validity of the mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) system Giraff as a means to support elderly people and to foster their social interaction and participation. Embracing the idea of user-centered product refinement, the robot was tested over long periods of time in real homes. As such, the system development was driven by a strong involvement of elderly people and their caregivers but also by technical challenges associated with deploying the robot in real-world contexts. The results of the 42-months’ long evaluation is a system suitable for use in homes rather than a generic system suitable, for example, in office environments.

Can an avatar’s body movements change a person’s perception of good and bad? We discuss virtual embodiment according to theories of embodied cognition (EC), and afferent and sensorimotor correspondences. We present an example study using virtual reality (VR) to test EC theory, testing the effect of altered virtual embodiment on perception. Participants either controlled an avatar whose arm movements were similar to their own or reflected the mirror opposite of their arm movements. We measured their associations of “good” and “bad” with the left and right (i.e., space-valence associations). This study demonstrated how VR could be used to examine the possible ways that systems of the body (e.g., visual, motor) may interact to influence cognition. The implications of this research suggest that visual feedback alone is not enough to alter space-valence associations. Multiple sensory experiences of media (i.e., sensorimotor feedback) may be necessary to influence cognition, not simply visual feedback.