RASTA – Augmented Reality and Automated Storytelling for Cultural Heritage

Project ARS01_00540 “RASTA – Realtà Aumentata e Story-Telling Automatizzato per la valorizzazione di Beni Culturali ed Itinerari”, funded by PON “Ricerca e Innovazione 2014–2020”.

Innovative ICT applications, advanced storytelling and 3D reconstructions increasingly support the enjoyment, understanding, sharing and preservation of cultural and historical heritage. VR viewers, AR glasses and immersive projections add an interactive and creative component to visits of cultural sites, which are often perceived as distant.

The project defines a framework for enhancing territories and cultural heritage through adaptive tour paths in virtual and augmented reality, using smart storytelling that personalizes the narration through recommendations and user profiling. It develops:

• representation models and reconstruction techniques for sites, scenarios and 3D objects accessible from various devices;
• immersive video-mapping for personal and group VR/AR environments;
• semantic annotation and archiving of digital content, in line with national and European standards;
• automated storytelling through semantic correlation and logical inference;
• user profiling based on sentiment analysis and learning of user behavior;
• a recommendation system based on semantic profiling, content analysis, point-of-interest classification and IoT sensors to compute ad hoc tourist routes.

Pilots: the UNESCO sites of Caserta, San Leucio towards Carditello; the Basilica of S. Angelo in Formis and Norba; Vallo di Diano; and tourist itineraries in Umbria, Puglia and Abruzzo.