We have submitted a paper to the eChallenges conference in Stockholm in October. Here is an abstract of the paper:

*Abstract: *Because of the difficulties in navigating public transport networks and finding out about available activities, cultural tourists tend to follow a pre-planned itinerary and to visit a fairly small set of well known attractions. An analogous situation emerges at the cultural heritage sites themselves: while cultural heritage sites typically have a large amount of archive material, only a small amount of information can be presented, therefore visitors tend not to explore the cultural significance of exhibits in depth. Our solution represents a complete mobile information system for travellers intended to encourage exploration. The system consists of three modules: firstly location-based information intended to enhance the cultural tourists understanding and to suggest exploratory activities based on modelling the users interests; secondly ad-hoc itinerary planning functionality to give the user the confidence to explore and a novel augmented reality system for presenting information in a user friendly way using markerless tracking. This paper  covers the research and development aspects of iTACITUS, a sixth framework programme project, reporting on both technical and coordination issues, as well as interaction issues encountered during the project trials.

IGD submitted a paper to the VAST2008 conference in Braga, Portugal in December ( http://www.vast2008.org ).The paper has been accepted.

The paper title is "Reality Filtering: A Visual Time Machine in Augmented Reality". Here is an abstract of the paper:

We present Reality Filtering, an application that makes it possible to visualize original content like drawings or paintings of buildings and frescos seamlessly superimposed on reality by using filtered augmented reality. This enables simple and inexpensive applications in the cultural heritage and architecture area.
The main idea is that the video stream showing the reality is filtered on the fly to acquire the same presentation style as the virtual objects.
This allows for a better integration of original historic content and creates the impression of a virtual time journey.
The registration of the virtual objects in the video images is provided by a robust 6DOF tracking framework based on two technologies that work in tandem: an initialization step based on Randomized Trees and a frame-to-frame tracking phase based on KLT. For the initialization, we present the novel concept of temporally distributed computational load (TDCL), which is able to automatically detect and register multiple objects while maintaining a constant video frame rate of 20 frames / sec.
For mid- to long-range augmentation a pure 2-dimensional tracking with 3DOF is applicable and leads to significant performance gain. The entire application runs in real time on Ultra Mobile PCs.

A paper related to the iTACITUS project has been presented by Michael Zoellner during the Stockholm eChallenges conference 23rd of October 2008.

The title of the paper is "Encouraging Cultural Exploration: a Dynamic Tour Guide based on Personalised Contextual Information and Ad-hoc Planning" and the authors are: Jonah DEARLOVE, Maurizio MEGLIOLA, Silvana TOFFOLO, Michael ZOELLNER.

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Fraunhofer IGD showed an iTACITUS-based application in cooperation with Rome Reborn at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles. The mobile application overlayed 3D models of roman monuments on floor-maps and posters at the booth in real time.

See a video of the installation at Youtube!

TXT presented a paper about the Progress Module used in iTacitus at  the “EVA 2008" conference in Wien, Austria on Tuesday , 26 August 2008.

The title of the paper is "Integrating Agent and Wireless Technologies for Location-based Services in Cultural Heritage", authors are Maurizio Megliola and Luca Barbieri.

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