Abstract
Abstract. Augmented Reality (AR) is more than an added value for Cultural Heritage (CH); it is vital for its sustainability, promotion and dissemination, increasing accessibility in CH even during difficult periods of time, like the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to be meaningful and engaging, an AR application should have the following characteristics: easiness of use, high-quality representations and compatibility. This paper presents a marker-less mobile AR application for the display and inspection of high-resolution 3D cultural assets, overlayed on a particular location in the real-world scene. Instead of predefined markers, an image captured by the user is exploited as a pattern for real-time feature matching, pose estimation and scene augmentation. Our approach is based on pure computer vision and photogrammetric techniques, implemented using native C++ and Java code for Android mobile platforms. It is built with the use of the OpenCV library and the OpenGL ES graphics API without any dependencies of AR Software Development Kits (SDKs). Therefore, it supports cross-vendor portability regarding mobile model devices and hardware specifications. The evaluation of the developed application examines the performance of various matching techniques and the overall responsiveness of processing and 3D rendering on mid-range and low-end smartphones. The results showcase the reliability and responsiveness of the pattern recognition as well as the potential of the 3D graphics engine to render and overlay complex 3D models balancing between visual quality and time. The proposed methodology is applied to the Ciborium of the church of St. Charalabos, located at St. Stephen’s Monastery in Meteora, Greece.
Highlights
Immersive technologies provide the opportunity of rethinking and further strengthening the role of Cultural Heritage (CH) in the new digital era
As far as the pattern recognition results are concerned (Figures 4, 5), the matching ORB feature points detected by the application lead to successful pattern object recognition, in the case that it is depicted in approximately the same scale with its scale in the pattern image, regardless of any rotation with respect to the pattern image
This paper presents the development of a content-based Augmented Reality (AR) application for Android mobile platforms, which overlays highresolution 3D models at predefined locations of the real environment of the user
Summary
Immersive technologies provide the opportunity of rethinking and further strengthening the role of Cultural Heritage (CH) in the new digital era. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), the role of Augmented Reality (AR) is not to replace the real objects; it is to encounter and perceive them either from a cognitive or emotional point of view It allows for completing, precising and reconstructing layers of information on the physical sites or assets through the camera. Proof of its wide scale adoption is the abundance of CH AR applications for mobile devices that have been launched (e.g., Haugstvedt and Krogstie, 2012; Verykokou et al, 2014; Galatis et al, 2016; Panou et al, 2018; Ramtohul and Khedo, 2019; Čejka et al, 2020) The nature of this technology can serve the actual needs of the CH community with the overlay of specific-domain knowledge or by addressing critical situations.
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