The EPOCH multimodal interface for interacting with digital heritage artefacts

In recent years, 3D and virtual reality have emerged as areas of extreme interest as methods for visualizing digital museum artefacts in context, and particularly over the Internet. The technology associated with these new visualization techniques has until now been very expensive. The advent of cheap computing and graphics cards coupled with increasing Internet ‘broadband’ access has made possible the implementation of effective virtual museums both online and within the museum. Virtual museums are valuable for the end-user for efficient and remote learning about their local heritage in a diverse multimodal manner. Multimodal access to museum artefacts can help the user to better understand and appreciate the objects and stories that the museum brings forward, but also creates a closer psychological bond between the user and his past. If we now couple cheap computing technologies, 3D and virtual reality with appropriate 3D interaction techniques based on formal usability evaluations, museums are able to implement high fidelity exhibitions that are intuitive for the museum visitor. This paper reports on the latest technological additions to the EPOCH Multimodal Interface, which is used as an interaction interface that can be implemented as part of a virtual museum interactive system.