Augmented Reality is a central pillar of the AURORA project, which aims to provide students with basic technical skills expendable in the labor market for new professions in the tourism and cultural sector. It is an undeniable fact that augmented and virtual reality are taking over the world by storm, finding applications in every industry and offering unique immersive and enriching experiences to their users.
The AURORA group that had the chance to visit during the CREA CULTURA festival in Foligno, Italy, participated in lectures surrounding the tourism and marketing sectors, in the end linking them with augmented reality possibilities. Led by Paolo Russo, president of the CHRACKLAB, students and teachers from Italy and Spain were introduced to the concept of artificial intelligence and discussed possible applications in the tourism sector, on which the students are focusing their studies.
The group had a taste of Augmented Reality applications on a trip to neighboring cities Bevagna, Montefalco and Giano, all part of the Road of Sagrantino Cultural Immersive Experience. The participants followed the AR project by scanning its QR codes around the towns, finally leading to the Sagrantino Museum where the VR headsets offered for a truly unique immersive experience of the locations and their history.
Within the limits of the Museo Diocesano walls, students visited the collection of artworks hosted on the building’s top floor and were asked to take a picture of the one they liked the most. Paolo then spoke about a few ways virtual reality can be layered onto a real-world item, and introduced the students to the app Pictarize, one of the many websites that offer augmented reality possibilities.
The students spent the day finding information on their photographed painting, adding it to the program and testing it through a QR code for its application in real life, discussing problems that arose and cooperating to fix them. When the final product was ready, the students returned to the top floor, where they could try their AR creation in real time on their smartphone.
It made for an exciting experience for the young minds who got to see a piece of virtual reality made by their own hands. The skills these students acquired will benefit them in their future careers, and it was just one instance of the many possibilities the future can hold for these technologies, their role in each industry, up to daily life.
