Agenda

Pompeii fresco puzzle to get help from robots

The city of Pompeii was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD.

While much of the site was well preserved, many details about life in the city were lost, including some of the building's colourful frescoes.

Thousands of these fresco fragments are currently in storage at the site’s archaeological park and now a team at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice are creating robots to analyse the pieces with the aim of eventually piecing them together.

Partners in the "RePAIR" project, along with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii are: Ca' Foscari University of Venice coordinating partner and PI of the project Prof Marcello Pelillo, the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, IIT - Italian Institute of Technology - with the laboratories of robotics and artificial intelligence in Genoa and of the Center for Cultural Heritage Technology (CCHT@Ca'Foscari) in Venice - the Associacao do Instituto Superior Tecnico Para a Investigacao e Desenvolvimento of Portugal, the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universitat of Bonn in Germany and the Ministry of Culture.

[from BBC News]

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