Tactile reproduction of paintings: the experience of the Department of Industrial Engineering of Florence

Within the T-VedO project, financed by Tuscany Region, the Reverse Engineering and Virtual Prototyping Lab team of the Department of Industrial Engineering of Florence (Italy) developed a number of methods for the semiautomatic generation of digital 2.5D models starting from paintings. Once such models are prototyped, they can be used to enhance visually impaired people tactile experience of artworks. Such methods, combined into a systematic procedure, allow to solve most of the typical problems arising when dealing with artistic representation of a painted scene. The present paper presents both an overview of the proposed procedure, including most recent updates, and the results obtained for a selected number of artworks of the Florentine Renaissance.