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the Smithsonian, and the University of Maryland. The vision for the
project was to explore new forms of fi eld guides that enhance cognition
and memory. The project's explicit purpose was to serve botanists and
other scientists in identifying plants and observing or visualizing some
of the relationships at work in their ecosystems. Sean says, “If a botanist
is studying a caterpillar, they may not be able to identify the species of
plants that it eats. The system will help them create an ecological web
of relationships and perhaps even help build a semantic web in the fi eld
for further eco-informatic study.”
6
LeafView was a feature of the system
that identifi ed plant species visually in which the most effective identi-
fi ers were edges and veination (see Figure 6.4).
The LeafView project experimented with multiple cameras and sen-
sors as inputs and with hardened tablets, augmented reality displays, and
mobile phones as UI devices (see Figure 6.5). Sean observed an interesting
difference between scientists using tablets and those using head-mounted
AR displays. Those using tablets typically conceived of the process as data
coming from a sensor near the plant and being transmitted to the com-
puter, which represents it on the tablet display. Scientists using AR dis-
plays were more likely to construct the interaction as the
data coming from
the plant
. In this case, the AR display (and its particular sensory qualities)
Figure 6.4.
Left: A scientist uses LeafView on a tablet PC.
Right: Using LeafView with an AR visualization. (Photos courtesy of Sean White.)
6. Sean White, Steven Feiner, and Jason Kopylec. “Virtual Vouchers: Prototyping a Mobile Aug-
mented Reality User Interface for Botanical Species Identifi cation.”
Proceedings of 3DUI 2006
(IEEE Symp. on 3D User Interfaces), Alexandria, VA, March 25-26, 2006.
