Developing a Cyber-Physical-Social Metaverse System for Interactive Cultural Heritage Experiences

Abstract

The Metaverse is significantly impacting the field of Digital Cultural Heritage, providing new opportunities for preserving, presenting, engaging, and interacting with historical and cultural artifacts through immersive virtual environments. This paper presents the development and implementation of an Intelligent Reality Virtual Museum prototype system for interactive digital cultural heritage experiences, within the context of a Cyber-Physical-Social System (CPSS) architectural framework for Metaverse applications development. The prototype integrates advanced Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models in fusion with Digital Twins, Robotic and Gaming technologies to deliver immersive cultural heritage experiences that blend the real with the digital worlds. The paper presents the system architecture, system design, and development process, and the results of a user evaluation study assessing the usability and user engagement with the system during an interactive cultural heritage experience. The results revealed a usable system capable to offering engaging and entertaining interactive experience to its users, highlighting the potentials to be used for supporting and enhancing cultural heritage accessibility and engagement in our current digital age. System limitations and plans for future work are presented, focusing on refining and expanding the system capabilities towards the development of a new type of a Cyber-Physical-Social Eco-Society of systems for Metaverse applications to support and enhance the way users interact with and experience cultural heritage.