3D reconstruction for cultural heritage: enabling access to the Coats of Arms of Bo palace for the visually impaired.

Abstract

3D reconstruction within the field of cultural heritage dates back to the 80’s and it has gained importance in the last decades because of its crucial role in the digitisation of elements of cultural heritage. The digitisation of artistic and historic elements can broaden their access to people from all over the world and future generations and it can also protect the original materials of the objects. The goal of this work is to use 3D reconstruction in order to improve access to artistic and historic objects within the Bo Palace in Padua for all, including people with vision impairments. This thesis focuses on the digitisation and 3D reconstruction of some Coats of Arms, frescoed and in stone, which adorn the loggias of the Old Courtyard and the walls of various rooms in the Bo Palace. More precisely we will use the Coats of Arms of the Great Room, where Galileo Galilei used to keep his lessons. The Coats of Arms belonged to the students who held important academic positions, such as the rectors, their deputies and council members. The aim of this work is to first acquire, through a 3D scanner, the Coats of Arms, then to postprocess the scanned model using the software Geomagic DesignX. During this stage the errors of the scanned model will corrected to obtain the final digital model of the object. The model will be then subjected to a slicing procedure in order to be printable by a resin 3D printer.