recover from damages. A reforestation process can be
defined as naturally or artificially, by replenishing an
area that has been deforested with trees and plants
(Reforestation, 2021), and it happens when there is a
public or private interest in recovering that area due
to its ecological, social, or production value.
Objective
In this study, an application is proposed to join both
AR and reforestation to raise awareness of
environmental damages. By immersing users into a
real-time reforestation experience, the objective is to
allow users to virtually place 3D models of trees onto
real-world surfaces, by use of smartphones, in both
iOS and Android platforms.
The application, named “ReforestAR”, lets users
place virtual trees on detected surfaces, and with this,
simulate a reforestation planning experience. This
behaviour was achieved by the usage of an algorithm
that acknowledges the minimum distance between
trees. The application also enables users to
personalize the experience with specific options such
as scale modification, the quantity of placed trees, and
the type of tree that is being placed. Saving, loading,
and sharing reforestation projects are also possible.
2 RELATED WORK
Research of available published apps and an
extensive scientific review was accomplished to
better comprehend the current state of AR in the
market, considering its features, user interface and
main functionalities.
2.1 Available Published Apps
The market available apps related to reforestation
provide some interesting features related to the topic.
For example: Reforest App offers the possibility to
control the carbon footprint that humans emit with
their day-by-day activities (Reforest - Restore the
planet and reverse climate change, 2021), or Replant
(REPlant, 2015), whose main goal is to create a plants
lover’s community in Brazil, by dynamic
dissemination of stores, fairs, forums and events
related to reforestation.
An example of the integration of AR technology
with mobile apps is found in the Reforestation of the
Imagination (RIT) (Reforestation of the Imagination,
2011), an AR application developed in Unity
2
using
the Vuforia
3
framework. The application recognized
tree rings of sculptures in an art exhibition and show
a 3D model of the tree.
Journals and entities have started to create their
own AR apps, for example, The TIME
4
Immersive
mobile application (Introducing TIME Immersive, a
New Way to Experience TIME's Journalism, 2019)
was developed by an American news portal. Within the
application, the user can experience immersive AR
experiences (Example: simulation of deforestation in
the Amazon Forest). Another example is the official
mobile application of the World Wildlife Fund
(Introducing WWF Forests, now live in Apple's App
Store, 2021) that uses AR technology to show the user
species of flora and fauna of native forests, even with
real sounds and interaction features.
In the addition to the available apps in the market
analysed, it is also important to know what scientific
studies have been realized in the field of reforestation
with this technology in recent years.
2.2 Scientific Review
A mobile application using AR technology for plant
recognition was implemented by students at the
Technological Institute of the Philippines. It has
information on about twenty-five kinds of herbal
plants that can be found in the Philippines. The AR
feature allows users to scan an image of a plant
through the device’s camera, it is recognized and, if it
is one of the included plants of the database, the 3D
object of the plant is created and shown on the screen.
When the figure is tapped, information about the
species is presented. The authors evaluated
suitability, accuracy, learnability, operability, time
behaviour, resource utilization, and recoverability of
the application by getting users’ feedback. Thirty
answers resulted in a medium grade of 4,29 out of 5.
The application was considered as “acceptable”
according to the parameters that were evaluated
(Angeles, 2017).
Another mobile application that uses AR
technology for plant tracking and modelling was
developed by researchers of the Central China
Normal University in Wuhan, China in 2019. The
2
Unity is a cross-platform game engine with its own IDE.
3
Vuforia is an open-source SDK for creating AR
applications.
4
TIME refers to the American news magazine.