hFRACTAL: A cloud-assisted simulator of virtual plants for digital agriculture

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) techniques advances the development of research on virtual plants which is regarded as one of the most important parts of Digital Agriculture. At present, there exists a gap that the existing simulation techniques of virtual plants cannot achieve the purpose of real-time drawing by virtue of cloud computing according to captured picture of plants. To fill the this research gap, this paper presents a real-time simulator prototype, termed hFractal, of virtual plants in Digital Agriculture. The proposed prototype contains: (1) fast generation algorithm of topological structure of plants; (2) flexible simulation of virtual plants based on Fractals as well as L-systems. In summary, hFractal provides a convenient and flexible modeling and simulation environment that is particularly useful for those without an intensive programming background.