A new tourist installation will allow visitors to the Museum-Treasure at the Royal Collegiate of Santa María de Roncesvalles to discover the region’s heritage in a playful, interactive way. A team formed by researchers from UPNA’s Smart Cities Institute, in collaboration with the archaeological service company Gabinete Trama, which leads the project, and the video game development consulting firm Nexxyo Labs, is working on the design of a pioneering installation aimed at groups of tourists set to include 3D video mapping, emotionally responsive, conversational avatars and interaction systems which mix the real and the virtual, together with archaeological objects and virtual reconstructions of such objects, all in the same scenario.
The main objective of the project ‘VINET: re-creation of historical experiences through 3D mapping and emotionally responsive interactive guides for experience-based tourism in Navarre’ is to design an experience in which tourists are active subjects who can talk with virtual guides and interact with the heritage as part of a visit which does not develop linearly but in which the narrative and rhythm of the game are automatically generated based on the visitors’ actions when interacting with the avatar and archaeological objects. The chief novelty the project brings is its emphasis on the group experience rather than centring on individual tourist experiences.
Representation of one of the scenarios in the tourist experience.
‘The initial phase of the project has consisted of analysing the state of the art and identifying the most relevant examples of technology applied in tourism,’ explains Amalia Ortiz, professor in the Department of Statistics, Computer Science and Mathematics attached to the Smart Cities Institute (ISC). ‘We have seen that most of the practices promoted to date focus on individual experiences. In this project, we want to involve groups of tourists in a realistic audiovisual experience through an interactive system which adapts the content to their needs and curiosity. The technology developed in the project will make interactive digital storytelling possible.’
The project got under way in August 2021 and is expected to last through to March 2023. To date, the working group formed by ISC researchers Amalia Ortiz, Jesús Villadangos and José Javier Astrain, and the contracted researchers Xabier Olaz, Ricardo García, Sebastián Marichal and Iñigo Paños has focused on the development of the different technologies which will make up the installation, such as the emotional avatar and interactive digital narration system, and is currently holding multidisciplinary design and group dynamics workshops to design the tourist-focused experience and validate it technically. Also taking part in this work are members of Gabinete Trama, the archaeology company leading the project and in charge of the content, and the software consulting firm which specialises in video game development Nexxyo Labs, which is responsible for the 3D designs, visualisations and gamification of the experience. The professor of mediaeval history Iñigo Mugueta, attached to UPNA’s I-COMMUNITAS Institute, is collaborating in the design and historical documentation work.
Group photo of part of the team working on the project. From left to right, Jesús Villadangos, Amalia Ortiz and Ricardo Garcia (UPNA), Carlos Zuza (TRAMA), Javier Larumbe (Nexxyo Labs), Iñigo Paños, Xabier Olaz and Iñigo Mugueta (UPNA), and Nicolás Zuazúa (TRAMA).
A scalable project
In this phase, the researchers are identifying the main challenges they will need to overcome to implement the technology in order to ensure that the system processes the different inputs made by the tourists properly, hierarchises them and comes up with the most appropriate response. ‘When you’re working with inputs from a single subject, it’s easier to identify the needs of that person. But interacting with a group of people is more complex because you have to determine the output best suited to that set of inputs,’ Ortiz explains.
The project is the result of previous collaboration between the university and the company Gabinete Trama. On that occasion, UPNA researchers developed technologies to incorporate virtual reality into an exhibition on the bunkers in Erratzu. ‘We were looking for a new scenario to further this synergy between the virtual and the real in the tourist experience, and the people in charge of Gabinete Trama suggested Roncesvalles because they know a lot about and have a lot of documentation on the heritage of the area,’ the researcher explains.
One of the workshops held at UPNA as part of the project.
The project will result in a prototype installed at Roncesvalles on a temporary basis to monitor and evaluate its operation. However, the researchers’ idea is for the technology developed to have new applications in the future. ‘We’re working on the idea of making the project scalable, that is, that the avatar animations aren’t pre-recorded but generated automatically. The dialogue system and the animation engine that support the installation will permit later evolutions and developments, although they’ll always need to be adapted to the new scenarios,’ Ortiz concludes.