Page 194 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

194CONCLUSIONSThe survey attests to the close relationshipthat exists today between cultural heritageand digital technologies as the result of the emergence of new techniques and devices that have marked a huge leap forward in ways of representing heritage. These technologies are an increasingly necessary tool for sector profession- als and a means of boosting our society’s cultural knowledge.The imminent arrival of the so-called smart cities is ushering in an age in which heritage is an inte- gral part of the Internet of Things (IoT) through its monitoring. This will enable us, more than ever before, to feel the “pulse” of cultural objects and will be bene cial to their preservation.Heritage digitisation has attained a hitherto unimagined degree of faithfulness to the original thanks to the technological developments of recent years, with arti cial intelligence and robotics (drones/UAVs) at the forefront, making 3D models essential aids in recording and analyt- ical tasks.The materialisation of digital heritage through 3D printing techniques has proven to be the main novelty as it gives cultural elements a physical presence beyond the screen. The high degree of accuracy of 3D models makes them a basis for producing replicas of originals and for replacing missing or deteriorated elements. The examples examined attest to the potential of this new resource.Despite the reduction in the cost and improve- ments in the ergonomics of 3D data acquisition devices in recent years, the fact is that they have not yet succeeded in expanding and are nor- mally linked to inter-institutional projects with substantial nancial resources. However, small contributions such as the existence of open-code or free software o er prospects for collaboration which can e ectively bene t a sector under constant growth.The educational role played by digital technolo- gies in heritage dissemination can be positively regarded. Both multimedia and virtual proposalsCONCLUSIONSThe use of digital technologies in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of cultural heritage