With the rapid development of technology and the increasing use of social networks, many opportunities for the design and deployment of interconnected systems arise that could enable a paradigm shift in the ways we interact with cultural heritage. The project described in this paper aims to create a new type of conceptually led environment, a kind of Cyber–Physical–Social Eco-Society (CPSeS) system that would seamlessly blend the real with virtual worlds interactively using Virtual Reality, Robots, and Social Networking technologies, engendered by humans’ interactions and intentions. The project seeks to develop new methods of engaging the current generation of museum visitors, who are influenced by their exposure to modern technology such as social media, smart phones, Internet of Things, smart devices, and visual games, by providing a unique experience of exploring and interacting with real and virtual worlds simultaneously. The research envisions a system that connects visitors to events and/or objects separated either in time or in space, or both, providing social meeting points between them. To demonstrate the attributes of the proposed system, a Virtual Museum scenario has been chosen. The following pages will describe the RoboSHU: Virtual Museum prototype, its capabilities and features, and present a generic development framework that will also be applicable to other contexts and sociospatial domains. Available from here

Museums are institutions that primarily care for cultural heritage exhibition, preservation and conservation of historical artifacts. However, simply displaying artifacts and provide complex information to describe them is simply not sufficient to effectively engage museum visitors. To improve visitors engagement and their overall museum experience, the use of technology utilized by museums, introducing the concept of Virtual Museums. This paper discusses the use of Virtual Reality through the use of smart phone devices as a mean of a Cyber-Physical-Social system to support, improve and enhance the visitors' experience.
The RoboSHU prototype, its current development stage and future work are presented, together with the future research directions of the research team. Available from here.

The rapid developments in online technology have provided young people with instant communication with each other and highly interactive and engaging visual game playing environments. The traditional ways of presenting museum and heritage assets no longer, therefore, hold their attention and provide them with an exciting and dynamic visitor experience. There is considerable interest in the use of augmented reality to allow visitors to explore worlds that are not immediately accessible to them and relating them to the real worlds around them. These are very effective in providing much needed contextual information, but appear rather static when compared with multi-player games environments where players interact with each other and robotic characters (non-player characters) in real time. By fusing these technologies, the authors postulate a new type of conceptually-led environment (cyber museum) that fuses real (physical), virtual worlds and cyber-social spaces into a single dynamic environment that provides a unique experience of exploring both worlds simultaneously. Available from here

This paper reports on the open session help during the International Conference on Resilience and Sustainability of Cities in Hazardous Environments, where the aim was to discuss how the modern technology of robotics, virtual reality, and gaming could help in preserving cultural heritage sites. There is a plethora of achievements in this technology, but how and whether their fusion can add a new dimension to the preservation of cultural heritage sites and untimely contribute to their resilience and sustainability in our rapidly changing world is open to discussions and further research incestigations. Available from here.