iTACITUS aims to provide a bespoke experience for the individual cultural traveller, based upon a dispersed repository of cultural (e.g. historical, scientific and archaeological) resources, enabling both location-based and context-based interface paired with location-independent services. The services provided will include audio-visual, mixed reality and VR organisational components, and will be delivered in a flexible and timely fashion. The system is based on an advanced user interface on mobile devices supporting image recognition voice interface and the capability of using any available hardware interface: WiFi, Bluetooth, UMTS/GPRS and even infrared interfacing. iTACITUS will provide a virtual context supporting knowledge conceptualization, thus making the available cultural resources reusable and integrable into new conceptual contexts. With such instrumentation a user is able to locate, without a direct access to search engines, and to find information that is likely to be useful in his present cultural context especially where mobility is fundamental.
iTACITUS suggests an active approach to cultural heritage narrowing the gap existing between an expert researcher in the cultural field and a highly cultured and informed visitor, suggesting an active approach for integrating own real-time experience in cultural and scientific heritage by reusing available complex digital material to provide and integrate, into an existing framework, additional (and often complex) new information.
The objectives of iTACITUS are two-fold:
1. iTACITUS will investigate new methods of representing cultural heritage virtually (but integrated into existing realities).
2. iTACITUS will allow the customisation of personalised walking and public transport tours in urban areas, archaeological sites and museums, for each providing a specialized interface, depending on the network available in each site