HoloCities: A Shared Reality application for Collaborative Tourism

Abstract

Abstract Communication is a key arena for shared-reality application: our mixed reality application is developed on Microsoft Hololens and it has been designed to provide new engaging ways to discover the city using augmented reality. Most augmented reality tourism applications isolate the user, therefore, this application has been made multiplayer and collaborative to encourage shared experiences and socialization. In this project two scenarios are described: In the first scenario there is a real guide that exposes to the group, each equipped with Head Mounted Display, the peculiarities of the monument visited. Each user share the 3D models manipulated by the guide that can be in the same room or it can be a remote guide leveraging on the 5G network low latency. Moreover, the guide could highlight and label to convey relevant information about the objects. While in the second scenario there is no real guide, so the application automatically recognizes the framed monument thanks to a visual search engine running on a 5G-ready infrastructure and shows shared information to the whole group of tourists. Moreover, it uses the huge amount of multimedia data stored in the archives of the Italian Public Broadcaster RAI. Thanks to the fact that the new HMDs are able to track the position and orientation of the user, we have created a menu capable of following the user while exploring the city. Moreover, the shared-interaction with virtual objects is performed by hands or vocal commands. Both scenarios allow users to visit a city in a new and intelligent way, promoting participation and collaboration with others and with the guide, unlike previous approaches that involve only one tourist using the information provided by the app.