Bartow AR Murals

Bartow AR Murals is a location-based augmented reality application that overlays interactive AR experiences onto public murals throughout Bartow, Florida. The app doubles as a guided tour of the city—at each mural site, users unlock an immersive AR experience, and between sites, a map-based interface highlights local businesses and points of interest, encouraging users to explore the community while discovering interactive art.

Process

The project began with extensive community engagement. Over the course of the project, the team held stakeholder meetings, public presentations, and feedback sessions across the city, working closely with the Bartow Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) to ensure the app reflected the needs and character of the community. Local businesses were integrated directly into the app as content, turning the experience into a tool for economic engagement as much as cultural discovery.

The UX design process followed a full cycle—user stories, visualizations, and iterative design informed by community input. An on-site scanning period followed, where the team captured mural environments using Scaniverse photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning equipment from the Access3D Lab at USF, producing the spatial data needed to anchor AR content precisely to each mural location.

Four AR mural overlay experiences were developed across the city, each offering a unique interactive activity tied to its site. The map-based interface ties them together, guiding users between locations and surfacing local businesses along the way.

Collaboration

The project was a collaboration between Augmented Info Systems (AIS), the Access3D Lab at the University of South Florida under Dr. Laura Harrison, the City of Bartow Community Redevelopment Agency, and a network of local businesses, community stakeholders, UX designers, and artists.

Built with Augmented Info Systems and the Access3D Lab at USF for the City of Bartow.

key features

• Four interactive AR experiences anchored to public mural sites across the city
• Map-based navigation interface with local business overlay and integration
• On-site photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning for precise AR anchoring at mural locations
• Full community engagement process including stakeholder meetings, public presentations, and iterative feedback

technical details

Built on Niantic Lightship for iOS and Android. Mural environments captured using Scaniverse photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning with Access3D lab equipment. AR experiences anchored to real-world mural locations using on-site scans. Map interface integrates local business data provided in collaboration with the Bartow CRA.