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Geolocating Time: Digitisation and Reverse Engineering of a Roman Sundial

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Computer Vision – ECCV 2020 Workshops (ECCV 2020)

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Abstract

The sundial of Euporus was discovered in 1878 within the ancient Roman city of Aquileia (Italy), in a quite unusual location at the centre of the city’s horse race track. Studies have tried to demonstrate that the sundial had been made for a more southern location than the one it was found at, although no specific alternative positions have been suggested. This paper showcases both the workflow designed to fully digitise it in 3D and analyses on the use of the artefact undertaken from it. The final 3D reconstruction achieves accuracies of a few millimetres, thus offering the opportunity to analyse small details of its surface and to perform non-trivial measurements. We also propose a mathematical approach to compute the object’s optimal working latitude as well as the gnomon position and orientation. The algorithm is designed as an optimization problem where the sundial’s inscriptions and the Sun positions during daytime are considered to obtain the optimal configuration. The complete 3D model of the object is used to get all the geometrical information needed to validate the results of computations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. DAIS - Università Ca’Foscari, Via Torino 155, 30172, Venice, Italy

    Mara Pistellato & Filippo Bergamasco

  2. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Center for Cultural Heritage Technology (CCHT), Via della Libertà 12, 30175, Venice, Italy

    Arianna Traviglia

Authors
  1. Mara Pistellato
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  2. Arianna Traviglia
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  3. Filippo Bergamasco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Filippo Bergamasco .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Clermont Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand, France

    Adrien Bartoli

  2. Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy

    Andrea Fusiello

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Pistellato, M., Traviglia, A., Bergamasco, F. (2020). Geolocating Time: Digitisation and Reverse Engineering of a Roman Sundial. In: Bartoli, A., Fusiello, A. (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2020 Workshops. ECCV 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12536. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66096-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66096-3_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-66095-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-66096-3

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