Rome- A robot guided by artificial intelligence has helped to recompose fragmented frescoes from the archaeological area of Pompeii, the city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, using robotics to rearrange the remains as if they were a puzzle.
The prototype is part of “RePAIR”, an acronym for “reconstruction of the past”, a research project funded by the European Union that since 2021 has worked on reorganizing the remains of frescoes to reorganize them with the help of mechanical arms.
“After four years of work, the European RePAIR project has concluded, an international cooperation that has brought together seemingly distant worlds: the most advanced artificial intelligence and robotics techniques with the archeology and the preservation of cultural assets,” the project coordinator, Marcello Pelillo, explained in a statement.
(Pompeii Archaeological Park)
Specifically, the investigation had as its object two frescoes that they defined as “iconic”: the ceiling of some rooms of the House of the Painters Working on the Insula of the Chaste Lovers, damaged during the eruption in 79 AD and destroyed after the bombings of the Second World War; and the frescoes of the Schola Armaturarum.
The robot, guided through AI and the use of algorithms, has facilitated, Pelillo added, the work of archaeologists and “has represented a first pioneering step towards an ambitious objective,” which is to eliminate one of the “most laborious and frustrating activities of archaeological research.”
The system consists of two identical robotic arms joined by a torso equipped with vision sensors, and two hands with a flexible structure capable of delicate grip.
The robotic infrastructure was installed in the Casina Rustica, a state building within the Pompeii Archaeological Parkwhich was renovated and adapted to house the necessary technological equipment.
(Pompeii Archaeological Park)
Furthermore, in order to study the remains, the research group created, after digitizing fragments, artificial replicas so that the robotic system could manipulate non-authentic pieces in the test phases.
“After acquiring and digitizing the images of the individual fragments, the system tries to solve the ‘puzzle’ and the solution found is sent to the hardware platform which, using two robotic arms equipped with ‘soft hands’, automatically places the fragments in the desired position,” clarified the coordinator.
Thousands of remains of damaged works have been in warehouses for years, forming an impossible puzzle, and which, thanks to this technique, will be able to take shape thanks to new technologies.
The project was developed in parallel and coordinated with that carried out by a group of experts in mural painting from the University of Lausanne, led by Professor Michel E. Fuchs, who has been working in this context since 2018, with a program of study and manual recomposition based on the analysis of the different morphological, stylistic aspects and technical fragments.