Archaeologists turn to robots to save Pompeii
The city of Pompeii has experienced not one, but two deathly experiences - first from a volcanic eruption, then from neglect - and technology is now being used to keep it safe going into the future.
Decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant maintenance of the popular ruins resulted in the 2010 collapse of a hall where gladiators once trained, nearly costing Pompeii its UNESCO World Heritage status.
Despite this, Pompeii is facing a brighter future.
The ruins were saved from further degradation due to the Great Pompeii Project, which saw about 105 million euros in European Union funds directed to the site, as long as it was spent promptly and effectively by 2016.
Now, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s new director is looking to innovative technology to help restore areas of the ruins and reduce the impacts of a new threat: climate change.
Archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel, who was appointed director-general of the site in mid-2021, told the Associated Press that technology is essential “in this kind of battle against time”.
“Some conditions are already changing and we can already measure this,” Zuchtriegel said.
Archaeologists and scientists are joining forces to preserve and reconstruct artefacts found in Pompeii. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)
So instead of relying on human eyes to detect signs of climate-caused deterioration on mosaic floors and frescoed walls across the site’s 10,000 excavated rooms, experts will rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and drones.
The technology will provide experts with data and images in real-time, and will alert them to “take a closer look and eventually intervene before things happen”, Zuchtriegel said.
Not only that, but AI and robots have been used to reassemble frescoes and artefacts that have crumbled into miniscule fragments that are difficult to reconstruct using human hands.
“The amphorae, the frescoes, the mosaics are often brought to light fragmented, only partially intact or with many missing parts,” Zuchtriegel said.
“When the number of fragments is very large, with thousands of pieces, manual reconstruction and recognition of the connections between the fragments is almost always impossible or in any case very laborious and slow.
“This means that various finds lie for a long time in archaeological deposits, without being able to be reconstructed and restored, let alone returned to the attention of the public.”
The robot uses mechanical arms and hands to position pieces in the right place. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)
The “RePAIR” project, an acronym for Reconstructing the past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics meet Cultural Heritage, has seen scientists from the Italian Institute of Technology create a robot to fix this problem.
It involves robots scanning the fragments and recognising them through a 3D digitisation system before placing them in the right position using mechanical arms and hands equipped with sensors.
The project will focus on frescoes in the House of the Painters at Work, which were shattered during WWII. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)
One goal is to reconstruct the frescoed ceiling of the House of the Painters at Work, with was shattered by Allied bombing during World War II.
The fresco in the Schola Armaturarum - the gladiators’ barracks - will also be the target of robotic repairs, after the weight of excavated sections of the city, rainfall accumulation and poor drainage resulted in the structure collapsing.
Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)