Virtual Museum Development

Development of an application for Virtual Tours in the Museum. The application will provide an interactive map of the whole Museum. The visitors will use this map to guide the Virtual Navigator application to the Museum’s Room that they wish to visit, and then see the exhibits they are interested in. The exhibits will be presented in the form of a blog, using Web interfaces. Each visitor will be able to seek and find individual exhibits using query interfaces. The visitors will be able to leave comments and grades about the contents, as well as to perform context-sensitive searches. Therefore, the following goals will be achieved:

• Easy access to the contents.
• Informing of the public, with the aid of blogs.
• Visitor preferences identification.
• Creation of visitor communities.
• Statistical analysis of the exhibits’ visiting patterns.
• Easy update/entry with new content.

Aiming to improve the visiting’ experience, the visitors will be able to respond to a short anonymous survey. Their opinions will be collected and will be made available for processing. For this analysis, techniques such as factor analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis) will be employed.

Goals
The goal of this task is the design and development of a software application, which will be finally installed in infokiosks, in desktop PCs; this application will allow for virtual tours to the Museum’s wings (as well as to findings which are not currently exhibited), and to the excavation sites. The application will draw information from the repository (developed in Task 2.1), and will be the basis for the creation of the Virtual Tours Projection Room (of Task 3.3). The application will be fully compatible with current Web, Internet and Intranet standards.

Participating teams
AUTH, 13th Ephorate of P&C Antiquities.

Duration
16 months

Expected Results
Development of a Virtual Wing which will provide capabilities of Interactive Virtual Tours of the exhibits and of the excavation sites.

Development of an application running on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) to support interactive visitor tours exploiting the identification of exhibits near the position of the visitor. This application will support the following scenario: The visitor will carry a PDA running the application which will identify the RFIDs near the visitor and will guide him during his visit to the Museum’s Room or to the excavation sites. Moreover, the application will provide the capability to the visitor to “predetermine a route”, based on his preferences on the type of exhibits, or on their chronological age, or on the archaeological sites where they were found. Thus, the PDA will act as a Personalized Museum Guide, providing instructions to the visitor on where to go or giving more detailed information about the exhibits that interest the visitor.

Goals
The goal of this task is the design and development of a software application, running in PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), that will provide the capability to any visitor carrying such a device, to enjoy the services of a personalized museum guide with enhanced functionality for searching information, designing “routes” inside the museum or the excavation sites. This application will draw data from the repository (developed in Task 2.1), and will cooperate with the RFIDs (installed during Task 2.3) to identify the neighbourhood of the visitor.

Participating teams
CERETETH, 13th Ephorate of P&C Antiquities.

Duration
16 months

Installation of special-purpose equipment (hardware & software) and setup of a Room for Virtual Tours. Installation of equipment in a Museum’s Room for projection of “programmable” Virtual Tours. For instance, in this Room the Museum could very easily set up an exhibition dedicated to the evolution of the city of Volos, starting from the ancient times, then to the Mycenaean period, until the end of the Roman era, centred around the three major ancient cities Iolkos, Feres, and Demetrias.

Goals
Setup of Virtual Tours Room at the Museum.

Participating teams
CERETETH, AUTH, 13th Ephorate of P&C Antiquities.

Duration
16 months

Expected Results
Development of a specially designed Room to support an innovative exhibition way, targeted not only to students, who could digest easier the archaeological information, but also to the academy and to the archaeologists to accelerate their research efforts.

* Development of a test case – the test case will be used to confirm the effective and efficient operation of the Virtual Wings and of the Virtual Museum in general.
* System evaluation – the system will be examined by different groups of end-users to evaluate its ease of use. Additionally, the Virtual Museum will be evaluated with respect to social aspects; for instance, its use by handicapped people.

Goals

• Identification of possible implementation bugs at the system.
• Possibility of receiving feedback from the “users” of the Virtual Museum

Participating teams
CERETETH, AUTH, 13th Ephorate of P&C Antiquities.

Duration
8 months

Expected Results
1. Improvements to the developed system to increase/enhance its efficiency-effectiveness.
2. Feedback concerning the use of informatics & telecommunications technologies in the efforts to salvage the cultural heritage.