Abstract:

Cultural education has received a lot of attention in our interconnected world in recent times. Contemporary technological advancements can enhance cultural education by enriching the learning experience. In particular, Augmented Reality (AR) has attracted a lot of attention in cultural education recently due to its three main advantages: portability, ease of access, and ease of use [1]. AR can superimpose virtual objects on a real cultural object or site. For example, a visitor to an archaeological site can also view its virtual representation in ancient times. By exploiting AR, people interested in learning about a cultural object or site can be provided with augmented multimodal information and knowledge while visiting it [2]. In this way, learners can have an enhanced cultural learning experience with extra multimodal information about the past, present, or future of a cultural object or site. Using AR, we can recreate a cultural object or site, create an imaginary object or site, and superimpose virtual objects on real objects or sites.

In order to aggregate and interconnect heterogeneous contextual data from multiple sources, ontologies can be used in the development of the AR educational applications for cultural sites. This paper focuses on the ontologies and data models used to describe cultural sites in cities for AR cultural-educational applications. The goal is to identify the ontology or ontologies that would be best used for AR cultural-educational applications in urban environments.

After an extensive review of relevant case studies, this paper found that CIDOC-CRM is the most commonly used ontology, often in combination with other ontologies. Also, Historical Context Ontology (HiCO) is a frequently used ontology, again in combination with other ontologies. Korea Cultural Heritage Data Model (KCHDM) is the most common data model, but it is used in very specific cases since it was designed specifically for Korean cultural heritage.

The paper concludes with an analysis of the major research outcomes. More concretely, the combination of ontologies appears to be the most complete way to describe a cultural object. Even though the current ontologies are already quite complex, it seems that combining them is the best course of action, in order to completely describe a cultural object. A suggestion for an ontology that would fit most AR cultural applications in urban environments would be a modified 3-layer data model with CIDOC-CRM as layer 0, that can handle the descriptors and basic information of the object (or even 2 layers, in this case, the second layer holding all the background information). Layer 1 would consist of a HiCO ontology that would include relevant context and relations. Finally, layer 2 can possibly be a BCO ontology that includes relations to museum collections specifically.

References:
[1] R.T. Azuma, “A survey of augmented reality”, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 6(4), pp. 355-385, 1997.
[2] C. Petrucco & D. Agostini, “Teaching cultural heritage using mobile augmented reality”, Je-LKS- Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 12(3), pp. 115–128, 2016. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1180

Keywords:

Augmented Reality, Cultural Education, Cultural Object, Cultural Site, Data Models, Ontologies.