Ancient Kydonia AR History Tour
Ancient Kydonia History Tour, 2021-2023
Type
Mobile & Hololens 2 AR Experiences, R&D
Key Responsibilities:
· Tech Lead · AR Research & Development
· Software Engineering · HCI · UI/UX · Visual Storytelling
This EU-funded research project introduces a pioneering exploration of augmented reality (AR) combined with audio elements, which represents a relatively unexplored field within AR technology. This research focuses on the augmentation of reality by incorporating both visual and auditory content. The challenges encountered in this domain revolve around AR’s interaction capabilities and the accurate registration of visual and sound elements within noisy, bright, and busy outdoor environments.
The AR experiences (mobile & Hololens 2) are designed to enhance the exploration of archaeological excavation sites while walking through the city and the archaeological museum of Crete. The experiences employ cutting-edge gamification techniques, non-linear storytelling, AI DDA (Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment), dynamic real-time lighting, precise AR visualization, and spatial audio to provide players with innovative and engaging AR interactions.
Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) is a novel area of AR representing the augmentation of reality with auditory input. The way auditory input is combined with 3D superimposed information in AAR is challenging, especially in noisy and busy environments outdoors. This paper presents a novel, work-in-progress, mobile AAR experience that is deployed in a city environment while walking past seven archaeological excavation sites in the city of Chania, Crete, Greece. The proposed AAR experience embeds 3D graphics and audio related to the cultural content while a visitor walks around the city, offering a non-linear narrative. Visual and audio digital elements are accurately geo-located while a personalized AAR SoundScape Generator boosts audience creativity. AAR design is optimized for outdoor use.
Publications
Y. Kritikos, F. Giariskanis, E. Protopapadaki, A.Papanastasiou, E. Papadopoulou, and K. Mania. 2022. Audio Augmented Reality Outdoors. In ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX ’23), June 12-15,Nantes, France.
Y. Kritikos, F. Giariskanis, E. Protopapadaki, A.Papanastasiou, E. Papadopoulou, and K. Mania. 2022. Audio Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage Outdoors. In Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (GCH22), Sep 28-30, Delft-Netherlands. link
Y. Kritikos, K. Mania. 2022. Interactive Historical Documentary in Virtual Reality. In IMET International Conference on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies (IMET ’22), October 4-7, Cyprus. link
F. Giariskanis, Y. Kritikos, E. Protopapadaki, A.Papanastasiou, E. Papadopoulou, and K. Mania. 2022. The Augmented Museum: A Multimodal, Game-Based, Augmented Reality Narrative for Cultural Heritage. In ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX ’22), June 22–24, Aveiro, Portugal. link
Project: Ancient Kydonia History Tour
Project Partners: Technical University of Crete (TU Crete), Ephorate Of Antiquities Of Chania, Aegean Solutions
Co-ordinator and Scientific Lead: Prof. Katerina Mania
Director of Ephorate of Antiquities Of Chania: Eleni Papadopoulou
Aegean Solutions: Alexandros Tzortzakakis
Project Communication Officers: Prof. Katerina Mania, Dionysios Achtypis, Alexandros Tzortzakakis
Augmented Reality Research: Yannis Kritikos, Fotis Giariskanis (from TU Crete)
Mobile AR Experience Engineer & Designer: Yannis Kritikos (from TU Crete)
Hololens AR Experience Developer & Designer: Fotis Giariskanis (from TU Crete)
Music Research – Music Production: Yiannis Papatzanis
Music Recordings – Mastering: Nikos Vogiatzakis
3D Reconstructions: Hara Sfiri
2D GUI: HUT Creative Studio, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Dimitra Firiou
Ancient Kydonia History Tour, 2021-2023
