ATOR (Arc-Team Open Research).
The blog spreads tests, problems and results of Arc-Team research in archaeology, following the guidelines of the OpArc (Open Archaeology) project.
this short post is to notify you that are finally online the conference proceedings of ArcheoFOSS 2018. As you probably know this conference is the Italian annual meeting of archaeologists who use and develop FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software). The proceedings of edition 2018 are published on the journal "Archeologia e Calcolatori" (EN: "Archaeology and Computers") and can be accessed here.
Our contribution, related with our experiences in archeorobotics, can be downloaded here (on ResearchGate).
Some photos of Arc-Team's archeorobotic devices in action
I will try to upload ASAP, here on ATOR, a more detailed version of this paper in English.
this fast post regards the FLOSSopenMVG. This software is our first choice in documenting archaeological evidences in 3D (via SfM), from the ground level (for Aerial Archaeology we often use MicMac).
Due to the fact that, in the last years, we started to gradually abandon a simple 2D documentation, our use of openMVG increased significantly. For this reason we developed a small script to speed up the use of this software (without its GUI: openMVG-GUI), adding some preliminary operations (like a general quality reduction of the pictures via ImageMagick) and registering some statistics about the whole process. The script is released through the GNU General Public License and it is freely downloadable here. At the same address (on GitHub), you can help us in improving the script. Like always, any kind of help is be greatly appreciated (also simple language translations, since the script is currently in Iatlian).
Archaeological 3D done with openMVGScript (image quality reduced to 2000 px)
In the next future we would like to use ImageMagick to add a variable to the script, in order to optimized pictures for underwater 3D archaeological documentations, following the methodology we used in some of our past missions.
I am starting here a series of short post to show some of the features of the main software selected for ArcheOS Hypatia, trying to explain the reasons of these choices. The first category I'll deal with is the one of Virtual Globes. Among the many available options of FLOSS, one of the applications which meets the needs of archaeology is certainly Cesium. This short video shows its capability of import geolocalized 3D complex models, which is a very important possibility for archaeologist. In this example I imported in Cesium the 3D model (done with Structure from Motion) of a a small boat which lies on the bottom of an alpine lake (more info in this post).
Soon I'll post other short videos to show other features of Cesium. Have a nice evening!
It is a long time since we wrote something in this blog, but (like every year) the excavation season leaves us few time for research. For this reason, today I want to break our silence and show some results of our latest studies regarding archeorobotics (the use and development of robotic devices in archaeology).
If you are a regular reader of ATOR, you probably know that since 2012 we are working on optical sensor to achieve a real-time 3D documentation of archaeological evidences (or any kind of data we need to acquire during our projects). Since we started to work on different kind of drones (UAV, ROV, etc...), we discover the nice universe of ROS (Robot Operating System) and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) algorithms. In this post we summarized our research on this topic, focusing on the use of Kinect. Currently we already used this techniques on professional projects (like large scale surveys or excavations), adapting the system to work with RGB-D devices (in underground environment or during cloudy days) or stereocameras (with direct sun light conditions). For instance we helped our friend Cristian Boscaro of IUAV to test this technology in order to document the tunnels which connect the domes of the Abbay of S. Giustina in Padua. This evening I will post a video which shows a particular use of ROS and Kinect to solve a technical problem we had on the field today. We were working to assist the excavator in doing a trench for a pipeline near the Sanctuary of S. Romedio, in difficult logistic condition. Despite the absence of archaeological evidences, the Superintendence asked us to document the track of the trench, since often what is realize during the execution of this kind of work is different from what is planned in the map. Due to the fact that too few hours were left to accomplish a documentation with GPS and total station and that this strategy would have been pretty tricky (inside the gorge of the river S. Romedio) and not so accurate (for the scattering effect of the wood), we decided to use SLAM to get a real time 3D documentation of the track and later to georeference the result on the LIDAR data which the Autonomous Province of Trento releases freely. The video below shows the final result, which completely satisfies the (high) archaeological tolerance of this project.
The 21st Conference on Cultural Heritage and NEW Technologies (CHNT 21, 2016) took place in Vienna the first week of November 2016. In that occasion we gave a presentation entitled "Digitizing the excavation. Toward a real-time documentation and analysis of the archaeological record". Today I found the time to publish it in our blog, to share our research regarding this topic and in particular some interesting projects of "archeorobotics" we are working on.
Here below you can see the video of the presentation, done like always with the open source software impress.js and Strut...
... and here is a short description of each slide:
SLIDE 1
The title (strictly related with Digital Archaeology in general)
SLIDE 2
A short presentation of Arc-Team
SLIDE 3
All the work has been done thanks to Free/Libre and Open Source Software. In order to keep going on with our research regarding archaeological methodology we need the source code!
SLIDE 4
The fundamental schema of the archaeological cognitive process elaborated by G. Leonardi in 1982. The schema shows the progressive reduction of the informations regarding human actions before and during the archaeological excavation (Human activities --> Traces on the soil --> Natural and anthropological degradation of the record --> archaeological excavation --> archaeological documentation) until the interpretative knowledge starts recover information during the post-excavation stage (with analitical data interpretation and reconstructive hypothesis)
SLIDE 5
A practical example of the schema from the site of Torre dei Sicconi in Italy (a medieval castle):
1. Human activities (summarized in the building of the castle, the medieval battle and the destruction of the main structure and the controlled explosion during the Great War)
2. Traces on the soil (summarized in the evidences of the battle, of the controlled explosion and of recent agrarian activities, while just negative layers were found regarding the construction of the structure)
3. Natural and anthropological degradation (summarized in the battle, the explosion, the agrarian activities and the normal natural dynamics)
4. Archaeological excavation (the most destructive investigation: in Torre dei Sicconi all the layers concerning the tower and the main central building has been removed by this activity)
5. The importance of archaeological documentation comes from distructive analysis (excavation). Being a long term project, Torre dei Sicconi was documented both with traditional and digital methodology
6. Data analysis. During this stage our knowledge of the site started to grow again. In this case both archaeological and historical techniques have been used
7. Reconstructive hypotheses represent the maximum increase of our (interpretative) knowledge of the site. For Torre dei Sicconi this stage has been achieved just for the central part of the castle (tower and main building)
SLIDE 6
The archaeological excavation is the most critical (destructive) stage of our knowledge regarding a site.
SLIDE 7
Arc-Team's excavation strategies:
1. increasing the amount of information registered decreasing the time-consuming operation of archaeological documentation
2. on-site direct observation for a better interpretation, avoiding at the same time any kind of data selection
3. moving the lab into the field (chemical and physical analyses)
SLIDE 8
A milestone of our research: in 2006 the development of the "Metodo Aramus" gave us a better (more precise and accurate), faster and corect (equalized) 2D digital documentation with FLOSS.
SLIDE 9
Another milestone. Between 2008 and 2009 the migration from pure photogrammetric software to SfM and MVSR methods (through the development of a GUI for +Pierre Moulon's application Python Photogrammetry Suite) gave us better and faster 3D digital documentation
SLIDE 10
Even today we still use a combination of 2D and 3D techniques to meet different requirements of various archaeological projects
SLIDE 11
2D digital documentation through GIS is fast enough for on site interpretation during emergency excavation
SLIDE 12
A software like +QGIS allows a direct interpretation on the field without the necessity of long post-rpocessing
SLIDE 13
3D documentation gives better results, but needs longer processing time (even if it does not need long data acquisition on the field, which is always performed)
SLIDE 14
We achieved (a lower quality) 3D data acquisition which has the fundamental characteristic of being real-time, thanks to open hardware (archeorobotics)
SLIDE 15
Our experience in archeorobotics dates back to 2006 with our first prototype of UAV, which could be use professionally just in 2008.
SLIDE 16
Currently or archeorobotics research regards our last prototype of Archeodrone (a UAV specifically designed for aerial archaeology)...
SLIDE 17
... some CNC machines and, above all, the Fa)(a 3D, a 3D open hardware printer which without any kind of modifications was able to satisfy our archaeological needs (like 3D printing casts of unique finds or exctract and print DICOM data form x-ray CT scan)...
SLIDE 18
... and the ArcheoROV, the open hardware Remotely underwater Operated Vehicle which we developed with the +Witlab Fablab
SLIDE 19
Some pictures of the first test of the ArcheoROV
SLIDE 20
A first step into 3D real-time documentation through SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) techniques has been done with the open source ROS (Robot Operating System) and RTAB-Map via Kinect...
SLIDE 21
... and tested for 3D real-time documentation in wooden areas (where SfM and MVSR or laserscab would have been too slow), reaching in almost one hour of work a model (with real dimension) of 75000 points.
SLIDE 22
A benefit of archaeorobotic system like these (which are ROS capable) is the possibility to change the sensor in order to adapt the hardware to different situation, using monocular or stereo cameras (for odometry) as well as LIDAR or SONAR devices.
SLIDE 23
Another benefit is the wide range of possibilities offered by the different open source software (e.g. RTAB-Map, LSD-SLAM, REMODE, Cartographer, ecc...)
SLIDE 24
Currently the precision/accuracy level of a real-time 3D archaeological documentation cannot be compared with the results achieved with post-processing through traditional SfM - MVSR systems, but there are good prospects for improvement.
SLIDE 25
Nowadays, basing on our professional experience, the best use of such devices seems to be during extreme operations, such as high mountain archaeology, glacial archaeology, underwater archaeology or speleoarchaeology
SLIDE 26
Another important step to improve the reaction time of professional archaeology, in order to avoid errors during the critical stage of the excavation, is the possibility to perform some basic archaeometrical analyses (chemical and physical) directly on the field.
SLIDE 27
Considering the composition of any archaeological layer based on two different elements, the skeleton (macroscopic) and the fine earth (microscopic), it is obvious that different analyses can be performed in different work environment.
SLIDE 28
For instance, in the case of the skeleton, a fast petrografic (ontoscopic) analysis can be easily performed directly on the field (defining allogeneic elements), while further (more specific) investigations need an equipped laboratory.
SLIDE 29
Also in the case of fine earth, some raw descriptive analyses can be performed on the field, while laboratory investigation can reach very detailed results (e.g. with the Scanning Electron Microscope).
SLIDE 30
The field analysis of the fine earth is more problematic (compared with the skeleton) the most common test (e.g. the Soil texture by feel) are anametric and subjective
SLIDE 31
For this reason, archaeometric test are the better choice (e.g the sedimentation test)
SLIDE 32
The sedimentation test on the field can be improved with basic physical analysis (e.g. considering the Stoke's Law in order to define sand, silt and clay by the tme they need to sediment)
SLIDE 33
Another implementation on the field for the sedimentation test is the possibility to directly store the data into a PostreSQL/PostGIS database (through some specific fields of the archaeological recording sheet), using the open source application geTTexture.
SLIDE 34
An example of the use of geTTexture
SLIDE 35
Other archaeometric test which are simple to perform directly during the excavation are based on basic chemical analyses, and specifically with the quantification of compounds like phosphates or nitrates.
SLIDE 36
Moreover, with some simple workarounds, it is possible to turn anametric (boolean) analyses of carbonates or organic substances, into metric (quantitative) observations.
SLIDE 37
The Archaeological excavation is a destructive process, subject to fatal (not reversible) errors. Moreover the reduced time and budget in professional and emergency archaeology increase stress conditions during decision making stages.
Real-time 3D mapping can speed up data interpretation, avoiding data selection on the field, while on-site chemical and physical analyses (geoarchaeology and archaeometry) can define a better (data-driven) digging strategy.
I hope this presentation can be useful. Have a nice day!
Between 2011 and 2015 we gave lessons at Lund University (Sweden), during the course regarding "Digital Archeology" (held by Nicolò Dell'Unto). Our primary task was to introduce the students to the Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) to be used during their professional life (while the proprietary and closed software were presented by other teachers). These lessons were following the practical approach we developed since 2006, during our experience in training students for Innsbruck University (Austria) in the archaeological field-schools of Aramus (Armenia) and Khovle Gora (Georgia), directed by Walter Kuntner and Sandra Heinsch. These courses, taught during missions abroad, were possible thanks to the use of ArcheOS, the Free Archaeological Operating System we are developing since 2005. In 2009 our didactic experience was enriched by some lessons we gave during our participation at the TOPI Excellence Cluster of Berlin (Germany), where we further refine our techniques in 3D documenting Cultural Heritage with FLOSS, using Structure from Motion and Multi-View Stereo Reconstruction and starting a collaboration with +Pierre Moulon for the development of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) of its photogrammetric software Python Photogrammetry Toolbox (PPT: related post in ATOR: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). PPT was also one of the topic of the UNESCO master "Open Techne", in which could teach between 2013 and 2014, for the University of Siena and the Centro di Geotecnologie.
Despite some of these experiences are now over, we have a new opportunity to work with students during the courses regarding Open Source Digital Technologies applied to Cultural Heritage, which will be held in July at the University of Evora in Portugal and it is organized by +Carlo Bottaini and Rui Bordalo.
The fist lessons will be focused on 2D documentation Methodologies with Management through GIS, while a second module will regard the Methodologies of 3D Documentation. For further informations, here is the main page regarding the courses (in English and in Portuguese).
If you are in the nearby of Evora and you want to work professionally in the field of Cultural Heritage with Free and Open Source applications, this would be a good starting point.
I hope to see you there! Have a nice day!
Monuments of Evora (by Lumastan)
PS
We will not teach in Lund this year, but some lessons about Open Source in archeology will be given by our friend +giacomo landeschi, who knows the topic very well as well as most of our methodology (having worked with us for several years).
2016-04-08 Update
For people interested in the course, here is possible to download a pdf leaflet with all the necessary informations.
"Saturday, October 24 returns the main Italian event dedicated to GNU/Linux, free software, open culture and sharing: dozens of events all over Italy, hundreds of volunteers and thousands of visitors will be involved to celebrate digital freedom!"
This incipit comes from the official website of the event and summarizes what the Linux Day has been until now. As this year there will be also an event regarding ArcheOS (presented by +Leonardo Zampi in the city of Florence, at the organization Libera Informatica), I took the occasion to write a post with some links regarding the archaeological GNU/Linux distro, so that this material will be available for anyone who would like to show also this particular branch of the FLOSS universe.
As you can read there, we have two mailing list: one for the users and the other for developers.
If you are familiar with it, you can also contact us on our IRC Channel at FreeNode (#archeos).
For those people who would like to work on the code, we use GitHub to develop the main system as well as all the related software projects (source packages, patches, small applications, GUI, etc...).
Finally (for the users), thanks to the collaboration of the University of Innsbruck (Near East and Ancient History Department), we have a wiki system in which we are slowly uploading tutorial and videotutorial. The website is available at this address: http://vai.uibk.ac.at/dadp/doku.php?id=start, but currently is under migration on a new server and will be not accessible for the next couple of weeks. I will keep this post update about the progress of this operation as soon as I will have news.
In the next days I hope to find the time collect more material regarding ArcheOS and to write a post about articles and presentations of the last years. Stay tuned!
this fast post is intended to be an overview of the new open source software Polygontool, an application our friend +Szabolcs Köllö (aka +keulemaster) developed for Arc-Team. This tool is helping us in defining an automatic data processing protocol, in order to directly convert raw data files (collected with RTK GPS or total station during survey campaigns) into GIS readable formats. Currently the tool is under an hard test phase, being used during an interreg project (leaded by +Rupert Gietl) about the Great War between the Austrian and Italian border, but it had already positive effects on our work-flow, reducing the time expensive operations of manual data processing. The short video below is a demo to explain how the software works and what it can do.
The source code (in Python) can be found on github and it is already usable (if you want to test it) and open to contributions (if you want to help us in the development). Currently the configuration files (in the "config" folder) are optimized for our interreg project, but you can, of course, modify the terminology to make them fit to any other archaeological database.
Soon I will post other reports about Polygontool. By now I hope this preview will be useful for some of you (and maybe for us, if someone will join the project).
we are organizing an open lesson in Padua on 5 June. The title is "Digital bones. Nuove tecnologie al servizio delle discipline archeologiche" ("Digital bones. New technologies for anthropological disciplines") and the topic will be the application of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) to Tanatology in archeology and forensic sciences.
The lesson will be held at 10.00 in the Aula Emiciclo of the Orto Botanico, which is the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location, as it was founded in 1545 by the Venetian Republic (so it can be also an occasion to visit to this monument).
The Aula Emiciclo (image in Public Domain form PHAIDRA system)
The speakers will be:
Nicola Carrara (Museum of Anthropology of Padua University), with a general introduction to tanatology
Luca Bezzi (Arc-Team), with a lesson/demonstration of 2D documentation through GIS of funerary contexts
Alessandro Bezzi (Arc-Team), with a lesson/demonstration of 3D documentation through SfM/IBM of funerary contexts
Cicero Moraes (Arc-Team), with a lesson/demonstration of digital forensic facial reconstruction
The attendance is free and during the lesson will be also given a preview of ArcheOS 5 (Theodoric), especially regarding its use for archeoanthropological aspects.
ArcheOS for anthopologists!
For more details and informations, here below is the poster of the lesson.
The poster regarding the lesson
You can also visit the FB event page (connected with the exhibition "FACCE. Imolti volti della storia umana"), where, if interested, you can register for the lesson.
Again a short videotutorial about FLOSS in archeology. In the last one we saw how to turn raw data (from the total station) into the WKT code of a point; this time we will see how to create a line.
Like before, the system I am using is a preview version of ArcheOS Theodoric, done building the iso image just following the instruction of the readme file on the github page.
Now, thanks to +Fabrizio Furnari we also have the project for an ArcheOS manual (still work in progress). If you want to help us, you will find the code on the github page (yes, we like github very much...).
A great help it would be to translate these videotutorials into text :). If you want to participate to the documentation, you can contact us in many ways (also commenting this post), like the official IRC channel #archeos, or the developer mailing list (for more info, read the text here)
for who is interested, the deadline of the 9th edition of the ArcheoFOSS has been extended till April 25. Here is the official report (from +piergiovanna grossi):
"IX Workshop Free / Libre and Open Source Software and Open Format in the archaeological research processes.
From survey to data sharing. Technologies , methodologies and languages of open archeology.
Verona , 19-20 June 2014 (IT)
To encourage the submission of proposals,
the deadline has been extended till
April 25. The organizing committee's aim is to support the broadest participation in the joint
construction of a workshop of increasing quality, hoping that new
proposals can be submitted by scholars, researchers,
students, professionals, archaeological companies and associations, working in the field of Cultural Heritage and the FLOSS application.For proposal submission, please refer to the Call for proposals page.For more informations on the workshop, you can visit the page of ArcheoFOSS 2014."
The Arena of Verona (CC-BY-SA 3.0, author: Lo Scaligero)
I go on in recording basic videotutorial about FLOSS in archeology. This time I show how to turn raw data (from the total station) into WKT, starting with the simplest shape (a point).
Like always I will upload this material on the DADP wiki, udpdating the old tutorial (I am using a preview version of ArcheOS Theodoric).
Hi all,
today I start a new series of basic tutorial regarding the use of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) in archeology (oriental archeology, to be exact). One of the most difficult thing in doing tutorial is to understand what people needs (especially when the necessities are simple). For this reason, following what the software developers call the KISS principle, I'll take the occasion to record the videotutorial I am doing to help some friends in organizing a project in which we should participate.
The mission regards an archaeological expedition in the Hrazdan river valley (Kotayk region, Armenia) and it is a collaboration between the IsMEO (it: Istituto Italiano per il Medio e l'Estremo Oriente; en: Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East) and the ISMA-CNR (it: Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico; en: Institute of Studies on Ancient Mediterranean See). The project is leaded by the Italian archaeologists Manuel Castelluccia, Roberto Dan, Riccardo La Farina e Mattia Raccidi.
I will record these tutorial answering the questions I receive day by day from the Italian team in order to meet their basic needs. The first problem regards how to create simple maps to illustrate the project using a GIS (instead of closed raster and vector image software). Obviously the series of tutorial will be inspired by the FLOSS philosophy, so, as I wrote, just this kind of tools will be used (in particular the operating system you see in the video is my testing version of ArcheOS 5, not yet released...), but this means also that will be used just open data. For example one of the first task to face will be to find open geographic data to trace our maps: normally it is not a good idea to present our works using Google Maps or Google Earth, due to the restrictions on this material, which I suggest to read carefully (quote from the Google Permission guidelines: "You may not use Google Maps or Google Earth as the basis for tracing your own maps or other geographic content").
For these reasons, the first videoturial shows how to use a simple GIS (Quantum GIS) to set up a fast project. Initially we will install the plugin OpenLayers to allow us to use open geographic data (like OpenCycleMap from OpenStreetMap) to trace our maps (in the Projected Coordinate System WGS84/Pseudo-Mercator). Than we will add a new vector layer (by now we will use a shapefile, but later, when a real database will be defined, we will introduce the SpatiaLite format), using some open data from the Innsbruck University projects in oriental archeology (Aramus and Khovle Gora, leaded by Walter Kuntner and Sandra Heinsch) and setting a very simple database schema. After we will fill the attributes of our two example sites and choose some graphic parameters (using for this purpose the same attributes). Finally we will do a very simple layout (the one you can see in the image below).
Just an example of a very basic layout
Like always I uploaded the videotutorial on the wiki of the DADP project, but you can see it also here:
like I wrote in this post, we are working to organize an open source exhibition in Padua for October 2014. In our intentions the concept "open" will be applied to different aspects of the event:
The scientific work will be performed using just Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and, when possible, the exhibition will be staged with open hardware devices
All the produced material (3D models, images, software, hardware) will be released with open licenses (CC-BY)
When necessary, part of the budget will be collected with specific crowdfunding campaigns, connected with minor projects
We will try to obtian some material for the exhibition with crowdsourcing campaigns, asking people to release the material with open licenses
Today I'd like to explain the 4th point and start one of this crowd-sourcing campaign, which will be also a social experiment to see the potentiality of this medium for cultural aims.
One of the session of the exhibition will be dedicated to pareidolia, which is a "... psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant..." (quote Wikipedia). Obviously we are interested in this matter as it is also related with faces, being this figure one of the most common subject which people sees in different contexts. In this regard Leonardo da Vinci, thinking to pareidolia a device for painters, wrote: "if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture
of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you
will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes
adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and
various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and
figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and
outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then
reduce into separate and well conceived forms" (1). Of curse pareidolia in not only a matter for artists and also normal people are able to see "beyond the image" (from greek παρά είδωλον). Here below you can see one of the most famous picture in this sense, the "Face on Mars" which the NASA spacecraft Viking I took on the red planet surface.
Photo from the Viking I spacecraft (Public Domain)
As you see pareidolia is a phenomenon which involves different aspect of human life, form art, in which is often used intentionally like in the paints of Giuseppe Arcimboldo...
L'ortolano o Ortaggi in una ciotola G. Arcimboldo (Public Domain)
... to psychology, where some of the images of the Rorschach test are perceived by patients as human faces (2)
the seventh blot of the Rorschach inkblot test (Public Domain)
... to religion, like in this XIX century picture, in which some people sees the face of Jesus...
Swedish anonymous XIX century (Public Domain)
... and here we are to the meaning of this post: we need your help to collect pictures of different subjects in which is possible to see faces. In other words, with this post we want to start a crowdsourcing campaign on this topic to set up a special session of the exhibition in which we plan to show your contributes with a digital installation. To help us you can upload your picture on the exhibition FaceBook page (soon we will open also other channels). Do not forget to give your work the credits (that will be presented with the picture):
TITLE OF THE PICTURE (optional)
YOUR NAME (necessary)
THE LICENSE (necessary)
As an example, below you can see my personal contribute: the dashboard of my car.
Dashboard (Luca Bezzi, CC-BY 4.0)
We count on your help! Have a nice day and thanks in advance!
Bibliography
(1) Da Vinci, Leonardo (1923). John, R; Don Read, J, eds. "Note-Books Arranged And Rendered Into English". Empire State Book Co.
(2) Alvin G. Burstein, Sandra Loucks (1989). Rorschach's test: scoring and interpretation. New York: Hemisphere Pub. Corp. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-89116-780-8.
Hi all,
today I simply post the call for paper of the ArcheoFOSS 2014, which will be held in Verona. The text below has been written by +piergiovanna grossi, of the committee thatis organizing the event:
The logo of ArcheoFOSS workshops (done by +Paolo Cignoni)
IX Workshop Free/Libre and Open Source Software and Open Format in
the processes of archaeological research
From research to shared knowledge. Technologies, methodologies and
language of open archaeology
Verona, 19-20th June 2014
The IX Workshop ArcheoFOSS will be hosted by the Department Time, Space,
Image and Society and Department of Computer Science, University of
Verona. The workshop will focus on the use of free and open source
software and on the opening and sharing of data related to archeology
and cultural heritage. Key topics range from field research activities,
to analysis and lab studies, to sharing and dissemination via web,
including the presentation of excavation, research, study activities and
of projects aimed at data processing and dissemination.
The thematic lines are:
- FLOSS systems and tools in archaeological and cultural heritage research;
- FLOSS systems and tools in management, preservation and enhancement of
archaeological and cultural heritage;
- FLOSS systems of representation, analysis, sharing and web publishing
of archaeological and cultural heritage;
- Projects focused on opening and disseminating archaeological and
cultural heritage data.
Workshop sessions, in which the proposals may be included, are:
1 . talks
2 . seminars / workshops
3 . presentations of dissertations or small projects in progress
4 . barcamp
5 . install party or programming section
6 . other ( to be specified by the proposer )
Proposals will be included in the program based on contents, quality of
work and number of proposals received.
The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2014 , at 24.00.
today I post an old presentation which I had no time to publish before. Its title is "
Aerial archeology with FLOS Hardware and Software" and it is related with a lesson I gave during the Italian Virtual Heritage School 2013, held in Pisa atthe headquarters ofCNR.
In my speech I tried to summarize Arc-Team's experience in aerial archeology from 2006 until July 2013. For this reason the slides are a little bit outdated, but the presentation still contains valuable informations for people who want to start with aerial related documentations with free and open source tools.
The first section of the slides is dedicated to an introduction about the two main component of our
Free and Open Source Remote Sensing Platform: ArcheOS (software) and an open source UAV (there are many option, like the UAVP, the ArduCopter, or the KK derivated copters).
The second part of the presentation shows the prototypes we built, both open source (UAV and KKcopter) and commercial (DJ Naza).
In the third branch I tried to summarize in a kind of "blueprint" animated infographic the main structure of a quadcopter. And later I simply repeated the post of ATOR in which Alessandro Bezzi described how to build an open source xcopter (KK board based).
In the fifth section are shown some possible quadcopters configurations, while in the sixth part is analyzed the evolution of the flight techniques (also considering different conditions that can influence the work).
Finally I presented some cases of study and, at the and, are just some tips based on our experience.
The presentation is embedded here below (just click on the window and press space to navigate). As usual in ATOR, it is released with CC BY, so if you need (also just some part of it), you can reuse the material in your work. I hope it can be useful.
today I recorder a fast videotutorial regarding the GIS OpenJUMP (which is one of the Geographic software integrated in ArcheOS).
Normally, when you add a new vector layer in your project, you get a new empty level, without any database schema, so that you can start to draw your feature, but, if you want to add some info, you have to manually describe your db schema, like in the video below:
Of course, if you have to draw many different layers with a common database schema (like always happen in a normal archelogical GIS), this operation can be time-consuming (and boring). For this reason in the videotutorial below I try to show how to write a short script which automatically add in OpenJUMP a new vector layer with a customized database schema:
Since I fear the quality of the video is too poor in Youtube, I prepared an image in which you can see better the source code of the script:
The code of the script
To work correctly, the script has to be placed in your OpenJUMP folder, in /lib/ext/BeanTools/ and, as you see in the video, you have to refresh the menu in OpenJUMP (Customize --> BeanTools --> RefreshScriptMenu) to find it (in ArccheOS Caesar you will find the script already in the menu. Just modify the code according to your needs).
Like always I added the tutorial in our ArcheOS wiki (DADP project), in order to go on in composing a free documentation system for Digital Archaeology:
I also uploaded the code of the script into a specific github repository, so that, if you want, you can contribute in its development. We can use the comment space of this post for the discussion about the schema and about its possible modifications (or you can simply download the script and modify it in order to fulfill your specific needs).
In these days I am teaching various techniques to document in 2D cultural heritage with FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) at the UNESCO master Open Techne. In particular I speak about photomapping and 2D photogrammetry technologies (to record horizontal and vertical surfaces).
Teaching students is always an interesting and instructive experience and , in most cases, it is often a mutual exchange of information, so it is more similar to a dialogue than to a monologue. I often learned a lot during these occasions and sometimes I have the opportunity to further investigate particular topics or to change my point of view on them, thanks to the discussion with other people.
Today it happened something like this: we were investigating the right way to correctly take pictures in order to use them for am architectural photomosaic (fortunately among the students there are not only archaeologists, but also architects, engineers, computer technicians, etc...), so I thought that a good example was the "photographic paint" maid in 1873 by Giacomo Rossetti, that I happened to see some years ago visiting the Musei Civici di Arte e Storia di Brescia (IT). You can see this "masterpiece" in the image below:
Photographic paint of S. Maria dei Miracoli in Brescia (G. Rossetti)
If I remember well what I read about this photographic paint, G. Rossetti built a wooden stage in order to collect the different photos that compose the photomosaic without excessive distortion. Of course now there are simpler ways to take good pictures (just read the last post Alessandro wrote about the UAV dornes we built), but the question of the students was:
is this the first example of photomosaic for architecturale purposes?
To be honest, I was not able to answer the question. I just know that G. Rossetti presented its work during the exposition in Vienna in 1873 (where he won the medal of merit), but he started similar project earlier (around 1862). It seems that Rossetti's experiments were most appreciated abroad that at home (there is not even an Italian page in Wikipedia), so I think that better informations can be found in foreign countries.
If some of the readers knows similar work of other photograpgers/artist (or of G. Rossetti), please report them on this blog, so next time maybe I will be able to better answer to student's question about this topic :).
I always liked this Linux commercial, it makes you believe that anything is possible... and, in a way, sometimes it is.
When I think how the workshop ArcheoFOSS started, I find it incredible that it will reach its eighth edition.
It was 2005 and we were sitting on a table of Cafe Einstein in Vienna:
"The decision to start this workshop was taken one evening in November 2005 at Cafe Einstein (a few steps from Vienna town hall), during the conference “Archäologie und Computer 2005:
Workshop 10” (Böener W., 2006), together with Alessandro Bezzi, Luca Bezzi and Denis Francisci of Arc-Team. The idea behind the proposal to realize the workshop was mainly to take stock of the situation regarding the application of Free/Libre and Open Source Software philosophy to archeology." [Introduction to the first workshop proceedings, Grosseto 2006 - edited by G. Macchi Janica and R. Bagnara]
Nevertheless, here we are! The eighth edition of ArcheoFOSS will be held in Catania on 18 and 19 June 2013, organized by Giovanni Gallo and Filippo Stanco of the Image Processing Lab (Catania University).
The elephant, symbol of Catania (and PostgreSQL)
To celebrate the event, I made a short video showing the path of the workshop from Vienna to Catania. It is a kind of "Fligth of the penguin" in archeology, through eight years and more than 3742 Km.
For FLOSS nerds, I made the video with OpenShot Video Editor, simply using the animate title option called "World Map" (thanks to Luca Delucchi for the tip!)
See you in Catania!
Finally I uploaded the presentation we did in the CAA Southampton 2012. Until our website is down (for maintenance), you can see it here. Inside you can find more details about the aerial archaeology project we mentioned in the post Xcopter drone and SfM techniques.
Here you can see the first slide, in the new Arc-Team theme I did playing with beamer, LaTeX :).
