Embodied Virtual Communities: a New Opportunity for the Research in the Field of Cultural Heritage

The VHLab of CNR-ITABC and the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts of UC Merced are developing new research projects oriented to the study and communication of cultural heritage through multiuser virtual reality applications, off and on line. Despite the great diffusion of applications based on social networking, the knowledge in this field is at its beginning: there are still few multiuser domains for sharing and exchanging cultural and scientific contents and also for the communication of cultural heritage. A FIRB project, “Integrated Technologies of robotics and virtual environment in archaeology”, financed by the Italian Ministry of the University and Scientific Research, gives us the occasion to experiment and realize a collaborative multiuser environment in the web destinated to the scientific community. The project is a pioneering prototype, an innovative contribute in terms of methodology and learning, for the simulation and the interpretation of cultural archaeological contexts. Experts can achieve many advantages from this kind of virtual environments and tools of interaction; first of all the possibility to share informations, ideas, test simulations and exchange data.