Exploring architectural details through a wearable egocentric vision device

Augmented user experiences in the cultural heritage domain are in increasing demand by the new digital native tourists of 21st century. In this paper, we propose a novel solution that aims at assisting the visitor during an outdoor tour of a cultural site using the unique first person perspective of wearable cameras. In particular, the approach exploits computer vision techniques to retrieve the details by proposing a robust descriptor based on the covariance of local features. Using a lightweight wearable board the solution can localize the user with respect to the 3D point cloud of the historical landmark and provide him with information about the details he is currently looking at. Experimental results validate the method both in terms of accuracy and computational effort. Furthermore, user evaluation based on real-world experiments shows that the proposal is deemed effective in enriching a cultural experience.