Articles
VIRTUAL REALITY IN HORTICULTURAL EDUCATION: PRUNING SIMULATED FRUIT TREES IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT
Successful pruning requires the balancing of a large range of factors in the individual tree including structure, light penetration and distribution of wood ages.
Training staff in the art and science of pruning is challenging in part due to the time lag between pruning and regrowth.
This separation in time between cause and effect makes the heuristic approach of experimentation and investigation by the trainee difficult.
“Virtual reality” – the use of the computer to generate an environment which the user can interact with and which responds in turn to the actions of the user – offers significant opportunities for the teaching of pruning techniques.
By simulating the growth of a fruit tree in a virtual environment it is possible to enable the user to interact with the tree.
It is possible in theory for a trainee to prune a tree in a virtual environment and then observe its regrowth in a highly accelerated timeframe.
A main benefit of this approach is the coupling of cause and effect which allows the trainee to take a more experimental and interactive approach to learning.
Ancillary benefits include the reduced logistical effort of training in an orchard, and the ability for trainees to work at their own pace with reduced or no direct input from tutors.
We have produced a prototype virtual reality system for pruning in apple trees as a feasability study for a commercial product.
The prototype is based on apple trees digitised from orthogonal photographs; a binary tree data structure is used to store the data; and Open GL used to generate the environment and initial tree on a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation.
Growth following pruning is simulated using rule-based models.
Plans for further development include providing a full immersion environment with shutter glasses or VR helmet; migrating the system to Open GL under Windows-NT to assess the Pentium and P6 processors as platforms for commercial delivery; and assessing the feasability of including an expert system to guide the trainee’s experience and to provide a critique of their actions.