Haptics technologies and cultural heritage applications

This article describes the architecture of the "Museum of Pure Form", a virtual reality system where the user can interact, through the senses of touch and sight, with digital models of 3D art forms and sculptures. Two different realizations of "Museum. of Pure Form" systems are currently being developed at PERCRO, Pisa, Italy. In one realization "The Museum of Pure Form" is conceived as a system placed inside several museums and art galleries around Europe and made available to people visiting such institutions. In the second realization the system will be placed and tested inside a CAVE environment. Considerations on technological aspects concerning the implementation of a virtual environment endowed with haptic feedback for cultural heritage applications are reported throughout the paper