The paper presents different issues dealing with both the preservation of cultural heritage using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies in a cultural context. While the VR/AR technologies are mentioned, the attention is paid to the 3D visualization and 3D interaction modalities illustrated through three different demonstrators: the VR demonstrators (Immersive and semi immersive) and the AR demonstrator including tangible user interfaces. To show the benefits of the VR and AR technologies for studying and preserving cultural heritage, we investigated the visualisation and interaction with reconstructed underwater archaeological sites. The base idea behind using VR and AR techniques is to offer archaeologists and general public new insights on the reconstructed archaeological sites allowing archaeologists to study directly from within the virtual site and allowing the general public to immersively explore a realistic reconstruction of the sites. Both activities are based on the same VR engine but drastically differ in the way they present information and exploit interaction modalities. The visualisation and interaction techniques developed through these demonstrators are the results of the ongoing dialogue between the archaeological requirements and the technological solutions developed.

No abstract

This paper describes a multimodal tracking system to resolve occlusions in augmented reality applications. The first module of the proposed architecture is composed of a vision based system and allows identification and tracking of visible targets. When targets are partially occluded by scene elements, a second module relieves the vision based module and tracks feature points using a robust algorithm. Finally, a multi-sensors tracking approach is implemented to handle total occlusion of targets and maintains registration even if all markers are not visible. Experimental results and many evaluations have been performed to show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed multimodal approach of tracking and occlusion handling in augmented reality.

No abstract