Automatic Semantic Analysis of 3D Content in Digital Repositories

The increasing popularity of 3D technologies is having an impact on the amount of content that is being produced by users of these technologies. Witnessing the explosion of content such as images, music and videos available on the web, it is not difficult to predict that 3D will be the next type of content to undergo this effect. The research community has been taking action to ensure 3D content can be stored and managed in databases or repositories in order to be accessible to a wide variety of users. Nevertheless, searching for 3D content in these repositories is not an easy task. The main problem is that although a digital 3D representation of a physical object is a more accurate representation, the way that the information is stored means that automated solutions for understanding what the content represents is an unsolved challenged. To address this problem, the research community has created ways to tag or 'attach' additional information to the 3D content, as is done with 2D images, to support the computer's understanding of what the 3D content represents. However, this process is currently slow as it relies on mostly manual or semi-automatic techniques. This project will take these basic techniques forward by researching state of the art mechanisms to automate the enrichment of 3D content. This will be done by focusing on Cultural Heritage artefacts, in particular Regency architectural ornamental artefacts, to understand how the shape of an artefact might provide us with information about it (e.g. its origin, artistic style, production methods). It is currently very challenging to infer this high level information automatically. The project will thus combine expertise in shape analysis, the semantic web and Cultural Heritage in order to develop innovative techniques to automatically understand what the 3D content might represent. This process is referred to as "automatic semantic enrichment" and will allow the 3D content to be linked to a vast amount of information and knowledge which will facilitate making connections with other pieces of information. As a result, searching for the most relevant item of 3D content amongst the petabytes of information stored in the database will be considerably improved. In turn, this will improve the availability and use of 3D content for different purposes. For instance, the project will demonstrate how the research can support the restoration of historical buildings.

The technologies and scientific advances resulting from the proposed research will impact on several beneficiaries. Ultimately, the project results will improve the organisation and discoverability of 3D content in large scale repositories. Hence, the foreseen beneficiaries are those individuals and organisations who are involved in the production, management and use of repositories with 3D content. We have classified them as a) owners/producers of content, which include the Cultural Heritage partner who will be contributing to the research; b) infrastructure providers for the technologies underlying the repositories; c) funders who provide resources for the digitisation of, population of and access to the repositories; and d) consumers of the 3D content (ultimately the wider public). The benefits to these stakeholders are varied and some are shorter term than others.

A direct economic benefit from the research is that its results will unleash opportunities for the use of 3D content within the creative industries and in fact the city of Brighton and Hove where the PI is based is one of the creative hotspots of the UK. A large percentage of businesses in the city work in the creative industries sector, in particular in the new media and digital subsector. These types of industry could provide the UK with a major source of economic growth if the challenge of ensuring the availability of substantial content to enable the creative industries to monetise their creative ideas is addressed.

Economically, organisations which own/produce 3D content, in particular our Cultural Heritage partner, will benefit from the project results, as the resulting technologies will enable them to provide improved access to their content. For other owners/producers of content, economic benefits will be the result of revenues generated from increased access. This will improve the return on digitisation investment depending on the business models used to charge for access. For example, museums could provide access to high quality content to the creative industry to build mobile apps, film, or printed products. These economic benefits will be shared amongst owners/producers of 3D content as well as those who provide the underlying infrastructure for the repositories in which the content resides. In addition, for those organisations which exhibit the physical artefacts, improved digital access can stimulate interest in visiting those museums and sites.

In addition, the results of the project will enable organisations to experiment with different business models for mass 3D digitisation and for accessing 3D content. This has been observed with other content types, such as music and images, where as a result of wide availability of content and interest from consumers new ways are devised to provide economic revenue. However, this also raises the issue of protecting the rights of the creators so that they can realise the full economic benefit of their creation.

The innovative mechanisms for enriching 3D content with knowledge to be developed during the project will allow owners/producers of content to share their knowledge with a wider audience and thus achieve the social benefit of enriching people's lives. This will particularly be the case for those organisations that address the social and physical wellbeing of the public, such as Cultural Heritage organisations. These benefits will also impact on consumers as they will be enabled to more readily access and develop an appreciation for new knowledge in diverse subjects.

To ensure that all of these benefits are achieved, the project plan includes tasks such as increasing the visibility of our partner's collections, transferring skills and results from the project to our partners through close collaboration, as well as through disseminating the project via different mechanisms to a wider group of beneficiaries.