Can underwater robotics technology save submerged Cultural Heritage?

Abstract: Cultural Heritage can largely profit from the set of technologies that have recently been developed in Submarine Robotics. In this paper we focus on how underwater robotics and related technologies can be used to enhance economical fruition, control, protection and social impact of the cultural heritage. Robots allow on-line experience, in remote locations, realizing the remote museum concept as extension and enhancement of the virtual museum. These solutions push the cultural tourism beyond actual limits of the sites like the number of simultaneous visitors, the travelling costs, , the difficulties to access dangerous locations coming to a true, advanced fruition of the Cultural Heritage goods.