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Pompeii’s Lost, Savaged Architecture To Be Recreated By A Robot
By Mikelle Leow, 07 Dec 2021
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Photo 63025071 © Dzianis Rabtsevich | Dreamstime.com
What filled the walls of buildings in the ancient city of Pompeii before they were devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius? A humanoid might be able to piece those lost memories together with existing fragments that don’t always seem to make sense.
According to a report by Scientific American, scientists at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) are training a robot to examine remnants of frescoes in two buildings and then put them together by hand. Being able to work day in and out with no sleep, the bot will be deployed for when reconstructions are too abstract or would require too much time and effort for humans.
The robot, which currently doesn’t have a name, is the focus of a wider project called Reconstructing the Past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics meet Cultural Heritage (RePAIR for short). Researchers believe the work can’t be done by artificial intelligence alone, so they’re bringing in robotics and human archaeology experts and art historians too. The study is being financed by a €3.5 million grant from a European Commission fund focused on backing riskier projects geared towards “radically new future technologies.”
The robot will first attempt to recreate the frescoes of the Schola Armaturarum on Via dell’Abbondanza, Pompeii’s main street. This site, outfitted with wooden cabinets displaying trophies, armor, and weapons, is believed to have been the headquarters of a military-like group who organized military activities and gladiator fights, says Scientific American. Impressively, this structure survived the eruption, plus an Allied bomb in 1943.
The fresco fragments for the first building will be easier to piece together—although it’s worth noting that the robot will be working with a pile of “puzzle pieces” from anywhere in Pompeii, and not just in this one building. As parts of the headquarters were still standing through 2010, until heavy rains wiped them out, researchers know what the frescoes looked like (see below), making it a great project to start with.
#Pompeii. The Rebirth of the Schola Armaturarum.
— Pompeii Sites (@pompeii_sites) January 3, 2019
From restoration and excavation to its re-opening to the public. Dedicated visits, conducted by the #restorers, every Thursday from today: https://t.co/GmhaSKHhm8 pic.twitter.com/dr8ytwsiMS
After a successful run for the first set of frescoes, the bot will move on to replicating frescoes at the ill-fated House of the Painters at Work, so-called as Vesuvius had erupted while painters in this building were still at work. Brushes, buckets, and underdrawings were uncovered at the scene.
“Let’s hope we are successful, because it’s never been tried before,” Arianna Traviglia, director of the IIT Center for Cultural Heritage and Technology, told the publication with a laugh. “It’s really craziness at the highest level.”
To handle the remnants, the humanoid would need the smarts, strength, and a sensitive touch, Scientific American reports. It will use computer vision to look at the fresco pieces, rely on machine-learning algorithms to put them together, and then turn to human experts for direction.
The robot, as tall as the upper body of a human, will have torso and arms—respectively designed by Nikolaos Tsagarakis and team at IIT’s Humanoid & Human Centered Mechatronics lab in Genoa; and Antonio Bicchi, University of Pisa’s chair of robotics and IIT senior scientist.
Its soft hands—installed with tactile, kinesthetic, and position sensors—will carefully grip, move, and organize the fresco pieces. In addition, they have scanning abilities to gain data from the fragments and passes it on to AI, which will look for matches. The AI then shares its findings with the hands, which will reassemble the fragments.
It is hoped that the robot will be deployed onsite by mid-2022, though the team will continue to be supported by the grant until 2025. Beyond Pompeii’s ruins, the scientists hope the project would help museums everywhere put together broken artifacts of all kinds.
[via Scientific American, cover photo 63025071 © Dzianis Rabtsevich | Dreamstime.com]
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