Immersive Educational Recycling Assistant (ERA): Learning Waste Sorting in Augmented Reality

For a sustainable living, it is everyone’s responsibility to do our best at recycling. However, waste classification can be complex. The existing resources may not have sufficient information or dynamic feedback to resolve our everyday garbage disposal. In this work, we design an interactive mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application, Educational Recycling Assistant (ERA), to educate people in doing sound day-to-day waste management. ERA utilizes dynamic object detection and provides in-situ guidance for proper garbage disposal. A user study was designed and conducted to investigate the effects and the user experiences. We found that the users achieved significantly higher garbage binning accuracy with the ERA app. The participants also improved their recycling and garbage disposal knowledge after using the app, particularly in complex items.