Cyberarchaeology: Improved way findings for archaeological parks through mobile augmented reality

Latest improvement on mobile devices capabilities definitively changed the way people experience their surroundings. Thanks to the improvement of built in sensors, devices are able to sense the environment at users’ location. The ability to provide contextual services to the visitors is a key aspect to make public parks more accessible, comprehensible end enjoyable. The paper outlines the application of Augmented Reality technologies in a real case scenario. The aim is to equip visitors with an ICT tool able to enhance their perception visiting open spaces and parks. The reporting area chosen for the study case is an Archaeological park, the Cardeto, located within an urban green open space in the outskirts of Ancona, a city in central Italy. Ensuring the success of the experiment has required an hybrid approach, with the main objective of providing visitors with an endless flow of information, anytime and anywhere. To reach this result, a mobile application has been developed, exploiting two different tracking systems: location-based and edge-based. The first one helps users to move along with a network of given Points of Interest disseminated within the park. At the same time, the second system displays a rich set of information each time a user came in close the proximity with artefacts or valuable heritages. This work is part of a wider ongoing project aiming at a better understanding of the potentials inherent the design space for smartphones in context-aware AR applications for tourists. Our experiment demonstrates the validity of purposed methodology as a promising solution for Cultural Heritage purposes.