Pre-Historical Cave Fruition through Robotic Inspection

This paper describes a technological solution for the remote fruition of an archaeological site, a cave hosting pre-historical heritage of relevant importance, using a properly equipped mobile robot. The goal is twofold: to increase the fruition of these precious paintings (both off-line and on-line with the robot moving in the cave) and to collect data (about the two-dimensional map of the complex cave and about the three-dimensional structure of the wall hosting the paints) that can be important to increase the understanding of the environment by the experts. The choice of the robot is suitable for this task before it does need a very light and minimal installation of mobile and reversible infrastructures: in fact in such an environment any intervention can cause significant damages to the archaeological site. The current modules are able to explore the cave to determine the most interesting zones (with a richer content of pre-historical wall paintings), to collect three-dimensional data (using a laser range finder) that allow the reconstruction of a planar map of the cave, the navigation between these relevant zones, the fine positioning with respect to the paintings and the reconstruction of a full three-dimensional model of the walls hosting the paints starting from a set of three images acquired from slightly different points of view.