The efficiency of augmented reality technology in smartphones for estimating the height of trees (case study: green space conifers of Lorestan factulty agriculture and natural resources)

Achieving sustainable forest management at different levels depends on basic information measurement to understand the use of this data correctly. The height of trees is one of the most important components of forest measurement that it forms the body of many forestry research works. Therefore, much effort is being made to measure it faster and more accurately. Nowadays, smartphones have a variety of technologies for measuring the height of trees. In this research, the researcher tried to evaluate the efficiency of height measurement technology based on augmented of additional reality by carefully checking the height of some trees. For this purpose, the number of 75 coniferous trees in the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources of Lorestan University was randomly selected and their height was measured by using the trupulse 360 (reference tool) and Augmented reality technology available in both iPhone 8 and Samsung S 8 smartphones. Paired comparisons of data were performed by using paired t-test and the correlation between data, the mean square error and the relative mean square error was measured too. By using the height measurement application, the highest correlation and the lowest RMSE value for iPhone8 were obtained, 0.989, 0.285 m and 4/97% respectively. By using the popular and current technology-based application, the RMSE was estimated to be 0.354 meters and 8/56% for the iPhone and 0.377 meters and 14/5% for the Samsung Galaxy. It seems the technologies in the new smartphones have this ability to replace the traditional tree height measurement tools.