Duration: 2010-now
Collaborators: Prof. Maurizio Forte, University of California, Merced
Funding: CITRIS Seed Grant 2010

Description:
At the cutting edge of research, 3D laser scanning, remote sensing, global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS), photogrammetry, and computer modeling have been used to collect and document data on significant cultural heritage sites. Virtual reconstructions integrate the complex layers of archaeological, historical, and cultural data and provide the tools for scholars to visualize, analyze, and test hypotheses on the data.

Since 2010 we have been in collaboration with Prof. Forte of UC Merced developing a collaborative application for digital archaeology. The application features distributed scene graph which is built on top of the collaborative Vrui framework, developed by UC Davis. The scene graph is managed off the central server which sends clients scene graph changes, 3D position of all users, and video and audio data for communication. This server-based model allows for synchronized interaction in the virtual environment. The software allows for visualization of different 3D objects (in wavefront format) in combination with GIS data.

The research questions we are interested in include the following: How do people interact with virtual characters and virtual humans, and how does this affect learning in a virtual environment? Is attention sustained and memory more robust for information about virtual historic objects (e.g., function of object, location of object) when virtual characters point at objects while they describe the objects? How will users as avatars grasp and manipulate virtual objects, and what are the cognitive benefits of this type of interaction? Two crucial aspects regard the role of “awareness” and “imitation”.

Videos:

Publications:

M. Forte, G. Kurillo, T. Matlock
Teleimmersive Archaeology: Simulation and Cognitive Impact
Proceedings of Euromed 2010 - Digital Heritage, Nov 8-13, 2010, Lemesos, Cyprus, pp. 422-431.

M. Forte, G. Kurillo
Cyberarchaeology - Experimenting with Teleimmersive Archaeology
16th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM 2010), Oct 20-23, 2010, Seoul, South Korea.

G. Kurillo, M. Forte, R. Bajcsy
Teleimmersive 3D Collaborative Environment for Cyberarchaeology
IEEE/CVPR workshop, Applications of Computer Vision in Archaeology (ACVA 2010), June 14, 2010, San Francisco, CA.