Lab In Virtuo – LabInVirtuo

The project is located in the field of knowledge engineering, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Digital Humanities (DH), on the theme: «Human activity versus history and heritage of industrial cultural landscapes« as a demonstration.
Our objectives are to develop and validate: a) virtual laboratories and methods of interdisciplinary research SHS-STIC (IA-RV) from demonstrators of strong historical and heritage interest; b) collaborative methods involving both institutional (museum, etc.) and non-institutional (workers, etc.) actors on the cultural history and digital preservation of industrial trades; c) scenarios located in the EVIRS dedicated to mediation.
Classically, knowledge about a 3D object is acquired through the collection of primary sources (archives, archaeological traces, etc.) and secondary sources (academic works), supplemented if necessary by oral surveys of living actors. Our proposal focuses on the acquisition and restitution of knowledge (declarative, procedural and embodied) in an EVIRS constituted from the 3D modeling of an EV with a material and sensory historical and patrimonial character (by sensory, we mean an environment where the senses are solicited either in terms of bodily context or participating in the industrial activity by the information they provide) with several sets of users. A set of users is a series of interactions involving two (or more) actors in the EVIRS in a collaborative science approach: i) researchers (historian, archaeologist, anthropologist,...); ii) heritage experts/researchers; iii) non-academic actors/researchers for the acquisition of information on the material and sensorial environment, acquisition/capture of know-how; iv) mediation experts/researchers/local actors. These collaborative sets of actors will allow the acquisition, sharing and restitution of more detailed and relevant knowledge thanks to the setting in an EVIRS. In other words, it is about improving knowledge elicitation.

The project is based on current research: in Brest and Nantes (CFV/ENIB/LS2N); IRP «Atacama - Social Sciences in mining territory« (CREDA, CFV, ENIB); «Techn'hom Time Machine« project piloted by UTBM and studies carried out at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. Several industrial cultural landscapes under study will therefore be our experimental fields: 1) ports (Atlantic Ocean: military shipbuilding, Brest; fisheries, St Pierre-et-Miquelon, Mediterranean: shipbuilding, La Ciotat; Pacific Ocean: mining ports of the Atacama desert, Taltal, Chile) and rivers (the former large mills of Nantes); 2) in the center of Europe: the industrial fabric of northern France; 3) automobile construction in France (UNISURF system).
These areas are both coherent and complementary. Coherence, because they all constitute industrial environments with a sensory dimension. Complementarity both by geographical areas, fields of activity and gender since two fields will concern more particularly a female population of workers («Techn'hom Time Machine« and St Pierre et Miquelon), see [LabInVirtuo, 2020].
We identify the following main challenges:
Elaborate and validate methodologies: a) to define and guarantee the «authenticity« of the EVIRS from the historical, patrimonial and sensory point of view associated with a Data Management Plan (DMP) dedicated to their perpetuation and their interoperability; b) to capture knowledge, gestures, etc. during the in situ activity
Design a natural interface (VR/AR) distributed with natural dialogue and multimodal interfaces promoting collaboration for knowledge elicitation and mediation. The idea is to consider conversational agents in the EVIRS as a natural interface. The autonomous behavior of these agents will have to allow them to interpret the actions and verbalization of the users but will also have to generate new interactions (question/answer, designate an object of the environment, make/observe a technical gesture,... ) according to the reasoning on the knowledge base (missing knowledge, inferences and validation of knowledge/ontology models); 3) Elaborate usage scenarios (user games, organization of the EVIRS, provision of an interoperable base of incremental knowledge resulting from previous research in SHS, etc.) and evaluate the gains in terms of the use of the EVIRS. ) and evaluate the gains in terms of production of new knowledge or memorization compared to the traditional practices in SHS or mediation.

The hypothesis we defend is twofold:
1) the immersion of the users in a "Sensory Realistic Intelligent Virtual Environment" (EVIRS) where the body is engaged from a kinematic, gestural and sensory point of view will result in:
a) an increased recovery of the various procedural, episodic and autobiographical memories that are usually interrogated in the classical framework of oral archive productions ;
b) beyond declarative knowledge, the possibility of capturing gestures and embodied knowledge;
c) a better memorization of the knowledge proposed in mediation;
2) Collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) makes it possible, over and above traditional approaches in humanities, to develop multidisciplinary research methods and innovative mediations with a qualitative and quantitative leap in the elicitation and restitution of knowledge and know-how.
The project is in the field of knowledge engineering, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Digital Humanities (DH), on the topic: "Human activity versus history and heritage of industrial and sensorial cultural landscapes" as a demonstration.
Our objectives are to develop and validate :
a) virtual laboratories and interdisciplinary research methods in the crossed field of human sciences and computer science based on demonstrators of strong historical and heritage interest;
b) collaborative methods involving both institutional (museums, etc.) and non-institutional (workers, etc.) players in the field of cultural history and the digital preservation of industrial occupations;
c) scenarios located in the SRIVE and dedicated to mediation.