Building and Retrieval of 3D Objects in Cultural Heritage Domain

Nowadays Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that promises significant results in a variety of applications. Despite the great advances in computer graphics and multimedia technologies, there is still a lack in the definition and building of a complete 3D object management system, in order to efficiently store, manage and retrieve such objects. In this paper a novel data model and a building and querying language for 3D objects are presented. This preliminary environment has been properly designed to be sufficiently powerful for including the functionalities and characteristics of modern 3D description languages, such as X3D and Collada, and at same time provides a formalism for optimization aims. Several examples from real Italian Cultural Heritage sites are provided and preliminary results are commented and discussed, showing the main advantages of the proposed system for both creation and information retrieval goals.