The HERitage sMart social mEdia aSsistant project offers innovative services enabling contextualized and multi-perspective, crosscultural explorations of the rich and various cultural heritage of a territory. The project proposes the integration of Artificial Intelligence technologies to contextualize and personalize cultural paths according to users' interests and implicit/explicit relationships among tangible and intangible cultural entities. This work describes the designed AI-based architecture, the integration of Ontology-based Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and Automated Planning to achieve the needed levels of contextualization and customization.

Analysing visitors’ behaviour in a museum or in a cultural site is a crucial element to manage spaces, artworks arrangement and to improve the visit experience. This paper presents the preliminary results of the ARTEMISIA project, exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to study, design and develop a methodology to interpret visitors’ behaviour within a museum context, namely the Museum of Rome in Palazzo Braschi (Rome, Italy). The aim is to combine literature on users’ experience (UX) analysis with experimental data coming from the visitor anonymous tracking from motion sensors (users’ stand-still positions, viewpoint direction, movements), merging the approaches of different research domains. Through the use of agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms, four categories of visitors were identified, then associated to user profiles emerged by UX evaluations. Such analysis may lead to new forms of visitors profiling and to the development of a new generation of customised applications in public and private contexts. Identifying and predicting users’ patterns with respect to room arrangement may also be useful to suggest improvement in the museum spaces and exhibitions (new indications, updated storytelling or changes in thematic configuration).© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Human mummies can often emotionally impact several people and affect the enhancement of territories. A new audience was born through the evolution of cultural tourism, as an example, in the case of the pop culture or fandom market, where tourism flows are aimed at the research of specific emotional experiences that are concentrated on literature or cinematic interests. Another revolution in the tourist industry is connected to the disputable case of dark tourism when the concept of travel meets the death topic. Human mummification catches both the abovementioned topics, and it may assign new forms and scopes in a typical schematic of geographic contests in territory enhancement.

This poster delves into the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with both the marketing and cultural heritage realms. By examining case studies, we elucidate AI's pivotal role in personalizing consumer experiences within marketing. In the domain of cultural heritage, AI is instrumental in crafting bespoke experiences, such as the "Hermes—a trip as you like it" project. By utilizing AI algorithms, this initiative tailors customized itineraries for visitors based on data analysis and user input. This approach aims to predict and meet individual preferences, redefining engagement and outreach strategies in cultural settings.

The proliferation of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies has significantly transformed the landscape of cultural heritage experiences, offering immersive and interactive access to historical and cultural content. However, the effective evaluation of user experience and system usability within these VR environments remains a challenge, primarily due to the unique demands and interaction paradigms they present. This paper introduces the Weighted System Usability Scale (WSUS), a novel adaptation of the traditional System Usability Scale (SUS) methodology, specifically tailored for assessing VR-based experiences in cultural heritage contexts. The WSUS method incorporates a weighted scoring system that accounts for the distinct aspects of user engagement based on the specific content of the experience, which conventional SUS does not adequately capture. Through a comprehensive study involving different groups of participants on a specific VR cultural heritage application, the WSUS methodology demonstrated a heightened sensitivity to usability issues related to cultural heritage contents. The results revealed that WSUS scores correlated significantly with users' overall satisfaction and perceived learning outcomes, highlighting the method's effectiveness in evaluating the nuanced dimensions of VR usability.

Three-dimensional (3D) technologies play a crucial role in the philological reconstruction of archaeological contexts. The integration of technology and archaeological evidence has made it possible to develop 3D virtual reconstructions, providing valuable insights into the temporal evolution of archaeological sites. This innovation serves as a significant research and analytical resource, enabling the visualisation of possible scenarios related to archaeological contexts that have significantly changed over time. Moreover, understanding these changes, the past and its relevance to the current context could pose a challenge to the general public. This work aims to illustrate a scalable rendering system using open-source Web3D apps and platforms, allowing access to information, 3D models, and descriptions to enhance the experience of artworks.

The MirrorLAB project, nearing completion, seeks to employ innovative tools to enhance Rome's public museum heritage within aristocratic palaces, focusing on their historical and morphological relationship to the city.The project aims to expose cultural content through inter-scalar, inter-modal ICT, making it homogeneous and operable by comparison and aggregation, using a geodatabase for cognitive data and a technological system for disseminating meaningful data within narratives.The initiative is built on three actions: documentation of aristocratic palaces housing art collections from the 16th to 18th century, prototypical representation of existing or virtually reconstructed palace interiors, and the design of a cultural and touristic circuit of publicly-managed palacesmuseums, enhanced with augmented reality technologies.To explore the relationships between buildings and their historical occupants, case studies linking museums to past residences are examined.This includes the Boncompagni Ludovisi collection, selected for its typological eloquence, historical stratification, and relational character.

Over the last years, the exponential progress of technology introduced a broader population of researchers and developers to the use of Virtual Reality (VR) devices in numerous contexts, e.g., gaming, simulations, and culture dissemination. Recently, cultural heritage has also been supported by motivational experiences and other improvements designed explicitly for specific users (visitors, researchers, and domain experts). In this context, we propose a protocol within a digital environment, using innovative, non-invasive, and non-destructive methods for the technological enhancement, education, and dissemination of ancient human remains. The presented case study is focused on sexual dimorphism in the human skull; several 3D models are digitally generated from female and male skull references exploiting an algorithmic approach with statistical analysis, e.g., Principal Component Analysis (PCA); then, the models are made available in a virtual environment with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and can also be interacted with via a touchless approach (hands-free). Tests conducted with segmented populations provided promising results.

In December 2022, DigiLab of Sapienza University, Rome, partnered with Società Cooperativa Culture to potentially develop a metaverse prototype, ArcheoVerso, dedicated to cultural heritage.ArcheoVerso aims to leverage digital universes to enhance both tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, creating an ecosystem for best practices in immersive and augmented reality and economically sustainable metaverse solutions.With an estimated market value of $758.60 billion by 2026, a significant subscription rate for Meta, and hefty investments by leading companies in engaging systems, the metaverse presents an immense opportunity.Like social media, it serves as an excellent communication and enhancement tool for cultural heritage, driving unprecedented public involvement and economic impact.Platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram are merging digital and physical reality, reflecting philosopher Luciano Floridi's concept of 'onlife' in a 'phygital' world.This transformation is evident in recent cultural studies.