Augmented Reality to Understand the Leonardo’s Machines

Augmented reality plays an important role in cultural heritage and education. The magic effect of 3D animated objects can enhance students’ interest, attention and engagement in school subjects. Moreover, augmented reality can help understand spatial concepts and the working principles of complex mechanical components. In such context, machines designed by Leonardo Da Vinci are a perfect case study for augmented reality technologies. This paper presents a mobile augmented reality application developed for an exhibit on Leonardo’s inventions: it shows the overall structure and the working principles of some machines recognized on the pages of the Atlantic Codex. We used Blender to design the animated 3D models of the machines and the ARToolkit and Vuforia frameworks to superimpose virtual models over Leonardo’s sketches framed by the camera of mobile devices. Subjective data about user experience collected through some questionnaires proved how AR applications can improve the dominant learning style in accordance with Kolb’s theory.