RICH 2012 Proceedings - 1st Conference on "Robotics: innovation for cultural heritage"

Scientists do their best to increase human lifespan, however nobody conceives we live really forever! On the contrary, we often wish that our cultural patrimony should last forever: our monuments, stone or paper, should withstand for the next centuries, even for the next millennia. But how large is the world cultural patrimony to be preserved? The vagueness of this terminology makes rather difficult to answer such a question, and we must add that an "object" or a "monument" that is suggestive for a community may be worthless for another community. In any case, we may for sure state that the patrimony worth saving is made up of million pieces: for all of them, scientists and technologists help is urgently needed to be safeguarded for at least the future generations. Robotic systems may give a significant contribution to this action. Today, many scientific and technological methodologies are employed to preserve our cultural patrimony, but only in a few cases up to now the enormous potentialities of the robotic systems were exploited. The purpose of this conference is to stimulate a stronger interaction between the scientists who work with the universe of robotics and the scientists who work with the universe of the activities needed to safeguard our world patrimony. However, developing, manufacturing and managing on a business basis specific Robotic Systems are highly expensive activities: this statement implies that this field has a chance only in case a mature market exists ready to absorb a significant number of specialized robotic systems. Hence, a few major questions need to be answered: which are the activities the Robotic Systems must be involved in, for doing what, and how, and for how many end users? The complexity of the needed activities strictly depends on the complexity of what we vaguely defined "world cultural patrimony" or "cultural heritage", putting together "items" as different as metal moneys, paintings, historical buildings and monuments, churches and mosques, books and manuscripts, musical instruments, bones and mummies, ancient trees, and so on. Such a complexity generates in scientists working with robotic systems a sense of confusion, making this unfamiliar subject of poor scientific and industrial interest, and consequently of small commercial utility. Mission and challenge of this conference are to show how significant and fruitful may be enter this field. Time is mature for launching a new Programme of the European Commission, endorsed by the 8th Framework Programme "Horizon 2020" starting next 2014, on the following premises: 1 - Scientific and technological activities carried out all over the world for safeguarding cultural heritage are nowadays well established and exploited with success in many public and private institutions. 2 - Many of these activities received financial support by the 7th FP and will be supported by the next 8th framework programme "HORIZON 2020". 3 - Many of these activities concern IT applications. Information Technology represents a substantial slice of the European Commission budget devoted to research and industrial development. 4 - However, up to now, no significant support has been given by the European Commission to Member States to develop new Robotic Systems specifically devoted to the safeguard of Cultural Heritage. 5 - The idea that many million Cultural Heritage items representing the Cultural Identity and a significant source of money for all the Member States may be saved and taken under control exclusively by Human presence is absolutely naïve if we consider costs. Consequence of this difficulty is that every year, all over the European Union, thousands of Cultural Heritage items get lost and many thousands will be lost during this century. 6 - Scientists and