Latin America. Immersing ourselves digitally in a painting or exploring beyond the objects and physical spaces of museums is a rising museum trend. A group of researchers from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, UOC, studies the various models of relationship between real spaces and virtual objects and their effect on the cognitive processes of visitors.
"This work aims to make a comparison between a real visit and a virtual visit in which both augmented reality with virtual agents in different locations and virtual reality and 360 video are used," explains Pierre Bourdin, professor and researcher at the UOC's Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunication Studies and responsible for this project.
Extended reality is a term that encompasses the use of different immersive technologies capable of presenting real and virtual elements with different degrees of integration. In this way, thanks to the use of this type of technology, a person is allowed to take a tour in the same spaces and see the same agents with a virtual reality helmet, which implies that this kind of virtual visits can be made from anywhere in the world. As an example, Barcelona hosts several immersive exhibitions: on the one hand, "Frida Khalo", at the Centre d'Arts Digitals (IDEAL); on the other hand, "Homo ludens", which combines video games and works of art, and "Symphony", a virtual journey into the heart of music, at the CaixaForum.
"The UOC has been doing research in this area for some time, but, due to the growth of the metaverse, interest in these areas has been reinforced in projects related to virtual and augmented reality, as well as its application in areas such as social and health, culture, e-health or education," says Bourdin.
Real visit complemented with virtual technology
In this work, augmented reality and virtual reality systems are used, as well as other audiovisual elements, such as 360º videos. All this, with the aim of offering the user a more complete experience both in their real visit and in their virtual visit and compare the effects of each one on the visitor's experience.
"These types of technologies are designed to visualize and interact with different computer-generated objects superimposed on the real world, which allows us to analyze certain cognitive processes and behaviors that occur in visitors," says Álvaro Pastor, a collaborating professor at the UOC, who is researching this area in his doctoral thesis project, directed by Bourdin and attached to the doctoral program in Information Technologies and Networks.
The researchers have put in place their own systems and models designed specifically for this research. "In this study we used virtual reality and augmented reality. They are specific own developments for the project, suitable both to capture reality in 360 video and to restore it later in a helmet, "says the doctoral student, who points out that an augmented reality application has also been implemented for the in situ tour.
"The experimentation is carried out thanks to the collaboration of volunteers who want to participate in individual sessions, every Saturday until the end of April at the CaixaForum in Barcelona", highlight the researchers. Thus, it is possible to register as a volunteer on this page.
"Volunteers will be able to visit the museum building using either augmented reality or virtual reality, depending on the condition assigned to them, with the aim of evaluating their perceptions and certain cognitive processes," explains Pastor, whose work has funding for experimentation and innovation projects of the Institute of Culture of Barcelona.
In recent years, augmented reality has become a claim applied to different museums with the aim of adding virtual content to pieces of the physical world. Thus, visitors can learn more when attending various exhibitions or benefit from expert knowledge.
Text published by the Open University of Catalonia, UOC.
