Underwater augmented reality for improving the diving experience in submerged archaeological sites

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Authors

BRUNO Fabio BARBIERI Loris MANGERUGA Marino COZZA Marco LAGUDI Antonio ČEJKA Jan LIAROKAPIS Fotios SKARLATOS Dimitrios

Year of publication 2019
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Ocean Engineering
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Informatics

Citation
Web https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029801819306298
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2019.106487
Keywords Underwater augmented reality; Underwater cultural heritage; Markerless and marker-based tracking; Underwater acoustic localization
Description The Mediterranean Sea has a vast maritime heritage which exploitation is made difficult because of the many limitations imposed by the submerged environment. Archaeological diving tours, in fact, suffer from the impossibility to provide underwater an exhaustive explanation of the submerged remains. Furthermore, low visibility conditions, due to water turbidity and biological colonization, sometimes make very confusing for tourists to find their way around in the underwater archaeological site. To this end, the paper investigates the feasibility and potentials of the underwater Augmented Reality (UWAR) technologies developed in the iMARECulture project for improving the experience of the divers that visit the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baiae (Naples). In particular, the paper presents two UWAR technologies that adopt hybrid tracking techniques to perform an augmented visualization of the actual conditions and of a hypothetical 3D reconstruction of the archaeological remains as appeared in the past. The first one integrates a marker-based tracking with inertial sensors, while the second one adopts a markerless approach that integrates acoustic localization and visual-inertial odometry. The experimentations show that the proposed UWAR technologies could contribute to have a better comprehension of the underwater site and its archaeological remains.
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