Abstract
This thesis examines how indoor vertical farmers can adopt mixed reality to enhance productivity and its viability as a smart farm management strategy in the increasingly digital precision farming domain. To answer this question, the research took a user-centric design approach to develop M/AR-IoT (Mixed/Augmented reality for Internet-of-Things) using the HoloLens 2 in collaboration with the owners of a small local indoor vertical farm in Singapore over five months. Two iterations of M/AR-IoT application prototypes were validated through two informal user tests. The first user test demonstrated and discussed four use case applications (M/AR-IoT 1) with a smart farm prototype to inform further development. Then, M/AR-IoT 2 and custom IoT sensor modules were developed and tested in their indoor vertical farm for real-time mixed reality environmental monitoring. Results showed remarkable visualization effects of head-mounted mixed reality to inspect digital data and information clearly and effectively relevant to the actual context. Mixed reality is most useful for quick tasks such as inspecting environmental conditions and visualizing rich content from various sources in one organized view while freeing up the users’ hands to carry out typical tasks. However, several factors in the indoor vertical farm context substantially impact user experience. For example, bright LED lighting impairs viewing comfort, and tight spaces constrain viewing angle and distance for effective holographic projections. From a practical perspective, this study emphasizes the need to take into account all aspects of the indoor farm when considering mixed reality integration. IoT-connectedness of farm systems must be considered for practical mixed reality integration. M/AR-IoT 2, for example, required custom IoT sensor modules for effective data capture and processing. Other user experience factors include the use cases of mixed reality (for visualization or user inputs), specific needs of the end-users, and the type of information needed for the supported task must also be considered to maximise mixed reality usefulness.