Macrographia

A system that presents very large images, which visitors can explore by walking around in a room.

Macrographia can present large scale images of artifacts, with which one or more visitors can concurrently interact by walking around. The system is installed in a room in which a computer vision subsystem, consisted of 3 depth sensors, tracks the position of visitors. On one wall a dual-projector back-projection screen is installed. Behind the screen lies a control room that contains two short-throw projectors, stereo speakers and a workstation. Visitors enter the room from an entrance opposite to the display. The vision system assigns a unique id number to each person entering the room. When at least one person is in the room, a piece of music starts to play. The room is conceptually split in 5 zones of interest, delimited by different themes presented on the wall painting. These zones cut the room in 5 vertical slices. The room is also split in 4 horizontal zones that run parallel to the wall painting, which are delimited by their distance from it. When a visitor is located in front of the projection, the respective wall painting part changes and, depending on his/her distance from the wall, visitors can see a sketch, a restored version or a detail of the wall part, accompanied by related information.

Since users are associated with a unique id, the system keeps track of the information they have accessed, as well as of the time they have spent on each slot. Apart from location-sensing, Macrographia also supports two more types of interaction: (a) a kiosk and (b) mobile phones. The kiosk offers an overview of the wall painting, an introductory text and two buttons for changing the user’s language. All information is automatically presented in the visitor’s preferred language while the selected part of the image is highlighted. Mobile phones are used as multimedia guides, automatically presenting images and text (that can also be read aloud) related to the visitor’s current position.

Installations

Long Term Installations


Temporary Installations

Publications

Drossis, G., Ntelidakis, A., Grammenos, D., Zabulis, X., & Stephanidis, C. (2015). Immersing Users in Landscapes Using Large Scale Displays in Public Spaces. In N. Streitz & P. Markopoulos (Eds.), Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Interactions – Volume 21 of the combined Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2-7 August, pp. 152-162. Berlin Heidelberg: Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series of Springer

Zabulis, X., Grammenos, D., Sarmis, T., Tzevanidis, K., Padeleris, P., Koutlemanis, P., Argyros, A.A. (2012). Multicamera human detection and tracking supporting natural interaction with large scale displays. in Machine Vision Applications journal, published online Feb 2012.

Grammenos, D., Zabulis, X., Michel, D., Padeleris, P., Sarmis, T., Georgalis, G., Koutlemanis, P., Tzevanidis, K., Argyros, A.A., Sifakis, M., Adam-Veleni, P., Stephanidis, C. (2012). Macedonia from Fragments to Pixels: A permanent exhibition of interactive systems at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. In Marinos Ioannides; Dieter Fritsch; Johanna Leissner; Rob Davies; Fabio Remondino & Rossella Caffo, ed., 'EuroMed' , Springer, , pp. 602-609.

Grammenos D., Zabulis X., Michel D., Sarmis T., Georgalis G., Tzevanidis K., Argyros A, A., Stephanidis C. (2011). Design and Development of Four Prototype Interactive Edutainment Exhibits for Museums. In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Universal access in human-computer interaction: context diversity - Volume Part III (UAHCI'11), Constantine Stephanidis (Ed.), Vol. Part III. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 173-182.

Zabulis, X., Grammenos, D., Sarmis, T., Tzevanidis, K., Argyros, A.A. (2010). Exploration of large-scale museum artifacts through non-instrumented, location-based, multi-user interaction. In Proceedings of the 11th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, VAST’2010, Palais du Louvre, Paris, France, 21-24 September 2010, 155-162.

Zabulis, X., Sarmis, T., Tzevanidis, K., Koutlemanis, P., Grammenos, D. and Argyros, A. A. (2010). A platform for monitoring aspects of human presence in real-time. International Symposium on Visual Computing, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, November 29 - December 1, 2010