Dario Di Mauro

Caruso: Interactive headphones for a dynamic 3D audio application in the cultural heritage context

One of the most important qualities of the physical environment in which humans live is spatial dimensionality. Talking about 3D, we usually think of 3D video, even if it is not the only existing channel of natural interaction. In this paper, we present an interaction system based on spatialized sounds. We developed an application in the cultural heritage context; a personal guide, in 3D sound, attracting the tourists attention toward monuments or buildings, offering soundscapes of augmented reality. The designed system interacts with smart headphones, remotely takes the orientation of the listeners head and properly generates an audio output, which also takes into account the listeners position and orientation in the environment. Thus, an innovative headphones using an inertial measurement unit for determination of the orientation of a users head have been designed and developed in open-ear mode, in order to locate the user in the real context.

E.Y.E. C. U.: an Emotional eYe trackEr for Cultural heritage sUpport

Enjoying a painting, a sculpture or, more in general, a piece of art and, at the same time, to receive all the information you need about it: in this paper, we present E.Y.E. C. U. (read “I see you”), a modular eye tracking system which supports art galleries fruition without diverting visitors attention. Every time a visitor lingers on a painting detail, a hidden camera detects her gaze and the framework beams, in real time, the related illustrative contents on the wall region around it, deeply implementing the augmented reality meaning. E.Y.E. C. U. enhances the gaze detection functionalities with an emotional analysis module: as pupil is well known to reflect the emotional arousal, we monitor its size, in order to detect radius variations. Once the visitor has completed her visit, the system summarizes the observed details and the emotional reactions in a report.

ICT Solutions for the OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A. Project: From Personalized Selection to Enhanced Fruition of Cultural Heritage Data

This work discusses the ICT solutions designed and developed within the OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A. Project. The mission of such an industrial and experimental project (Organization of Cultural Heritage and Smart Tourism and Real-time Accessibility) consists in developing some technological solutions for tourists and inhabitants aimed at appraising the cultural heritage of the historic centre of Naples. The project is based on a Social Innovation approach where services are created engaging all the possible actors in an ecosystem oriented to Smart Culture and tourism (companies, research groups and final users). Thus, in this work some innovative solutions in the cultural heritage domain are promoted and described in order to improve at the same time both the cultural knowledge to offer to different kinds of users (for instance tourists, citizens and researchers) and its learning and its preservation and protection as well. More in detail, we describe how our developed system is able to assist users before visiting the city, by suggesting them the most interesting places to see according to their preferences, and during the visit as well, in order to make the trip more interactive and enjoyable.

A Framework for Distributed Interaction in Intelligent Environments

Ubiquitous computing is extending its applications to an increasing number of domains. “Monolithic” approaches use centralised systems, controlling devices and users’ requests. A different solution can be found in works proposing “distributed” intelligent devices that communicate, without a central reasoner, creating little communities to support the user. If the former approach uses all the available sensors being more easily context-aware, the latter is scalable and naturally supports multiple users.

A Framework for Interaction Design in Intelligent Environments

Ubiquitous computing is extending its applications to an increasing number of new domains. The implementation of most of the newly appeared scenarios needs to follow guidelines coming from an expert of Interaction Design (IxD). In this paper we present a work-in-progress framework to conduct human-computer and computer-computer interactions and a tool for IxD applying it, as case studies, both in home and museum scenarios. Our framework uses multi-modal interaction and smart-devices, the main computational effort is dedicated to the design of a distributed chain of control monitoring sensors, devices and humans in the environment. The framework aims at merging concepts from the Intelligent Environments with those coming from Natural User Interaction theories. Moreover, the system includes designing procedures to support developers and users to produce new application just working on higher level layers separated from the infrastructural technologies. Preliminary results, coming from tests in Wizard of Oz, highlight potentialities of our framework.

PaSt: Human Tracking and Gestures Recognition for Flexible Virtual Environments Management

This paper presents a CAVE-like architecture to support the interaction for small groups of people with a leader in a multi-projection environment in the unusual condition where a vertical depth camera records people and their movements. In this framework, modelling people as gaussians, we localise and track people when they step into a defined area. We compared our approach with a typical local minimum one and our algorithm results to be faster and more accurate. Detected leaders manage the interaction with hands. We developed a trained gesture recognition model and a rule-based one and the former approach reports better outcomes. While the proposed virtual environment is mainly intended as a multi-projection system, the presented architecture allows to dynamically change the area such as to integrate further input and output devices. It can be extended up to provide support in collaborative tasks for remotely connected groups acting in the same virtual room. The whole system has been adopted in Cultural Heritage scenarios to provide an immersive experience for art, historical contents or virtual environments. Interviews with people participating to the experimentation phase of the OrCHeSTRA project show that the system was well-received by the general public and that future extensions towards collaborative environments are encouraged by the end-users.