GeoLab Augmented Reality iOS Application

Abstract

Augmented reality has come a long way in the past few year. From requiring special devices and hardware into the palm of our hands. The advancement of smartphone and tablet hardware enables beautiful, precise and engaging augmented reality experiences.

This paper discusses the implementation of an augmented reality experience for a geology laboratory. The specific case of a geology laboratory can heavily benefit from augmented reality. Since study rocks can be models in the AR application and then shared between students in the laboratory for visual study. Such applications can utilize the ability of devices in sharing augmented reality experiences. So, each student will have an exact match of the mineral being studied to themselves.

The proposed AR application is developed in xCode using SwiftUI. xCode is Apple Inc.’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE). While SwiftUI is the MVVM model framework of application development for iOS devices using Swift programming language. The experience’s AR capabilities utilize ARKit 6 framework and RealityKit framework for augmented reality. These frameworks provide unparallel AR abilities for tracking, positioning and rendering 3D objects. Furthermore, ARKit provides the ability of building collaborative AR sessions across multiple devices for a shared AR experience.