Give every cup its own digital life.
ARPlantCup is an experimental AR project that turns physical cups into containers for persistent digital life and artwork.
The idea started from a very simple personal problem: I love buying cups.
Different cups have different shapes, materials, colors, patterns, and personalities. I enjoy collecting them, but realistically, one person can only actively use a limited number of cups. Many of them eventually end up sitting on a shelf.
Instead of treating those unused cups as static objects, ARPlantCup asks:
What if every cup could contain something designed specifically for it?
A ceramic cup might grow a soft, hand-painted plant. A transparent glass might contain a translucent aquatic organism. A metallic cup could hold something more abstract, geometric, or luminous.
The digital content is not meant to be a generic AR object placed on top of any cup. The long-term idea is that each cup receives its own digital content based on its physical and visual character.
The first prototype focuses on plants.
A physical cup is recognized by the camera and becomes the anchor for an AR plant.
The plant belongs to that cup.
When the cup is visible, the plant is visible.
When the cup is picked up and leaves the scene, the plant leaves with it.
When the cup returns after being used for drinking, the plant receives water and responds visually.
Over repeated use, the plant eventually reaches its final form.
The goal is to create a relationship between:
physical object → human behavior → digital life
rather than building another screen-based habit tracker.
Most digital habit products ask users to interact with an interface:
- press a button,
- complete a task,
- check a progress bar,
- maintain a streak.
ARPlantCup explores a different interaction model.
The physical object itself becomes the interface.
Instead of:
“Open an app and log that you drank water.”
the intended experience is closer to:
“Pick up the cup, drink from it, put it back, and watch the thing living inside it respond.”
This creates a direct relationship between the action in the physical world and the change in the digital world.
At the same time, the project gives collectible physical objects another layer of value.
A cup does not need to be useful only because it holds liquid. Its shape, style, color, material, and emotional character can also become the foundation for a piece of digital art.
Each cup should eventually have its own designed digital content.
The current prototype uses plants, but the concept is not limited to plants.
Future cup-specific content could include:
- stylized plants,
- flowers,
- moss,
- aquatic organisms,
- miniature landscapes,
- abstract sculptures,
- light-based forms,
- animated creatures,
- seasonal environments.
The important rule is that the digital content should belong visually to the physical cup.
A user does not simply select a random virtual plant from a menu.
The cup itself determines what lives inside it.
The current MVP is based on the following behavior:
Cup detected
→ AR plant appears
No valid drinking interaction for 3 hours
→ Plant becomes visibly thirsty
Cup disappears from view for more than 3 seconds
→ The system considers the cup to have been picked up
→ The plant leaves with the cup
Cup returns within 5 minutes
→ Plant reappears
→ Watering response is triggered
Repeated return within 20 minutes
→ Does not count as another effective drink
12 effective drinking interactions
→ Plant reaches its final form
There is intentionally no conventional text-heavy interface.
The intended communication happens primarily through:
- posture,
- movement,
- color,
- growth,
- water effects,
- animation,
- spatial behavior.
The project deliberately avoids a traditional:
“I drank water”
button.
The goal is to connect the digital response to the physical use of the cup itself.
The first prototype therefore treats the following sequence as an approximate drinking event:
Cup visible
→ Cup leaves
→ Cup remains away briefly
→ Cup returns
This does not attempt to medically verify water consumption.
It is an interaction design mechanism intended to create a stronger connection between the real cup and the virtual organism.
The plant is not intended to grow after every single interaction.
Short-term interactions provide immediate feedback such as:
- leaves recovering,
- movement,
- water droplets,
- changes in posture,
- subtle visual responses.
Long-term behavior produces the major reward.
After 12 effective drinking interactions, the plant reaches its final visual form.
This separates:
immediate feedback
from
meaningful long-term transformation.
The project is currently being developed as an iOS-first mobile AR prototype.
- Unity 6
- AR Foundation
- Apple ARKit XR Plugin
- Xcode
- iPhone
- Blender for custom 3D assets
The intended cup-recognition pipeline is:
iPhone Camera
↓
AI Cup Detection
↓
Cup position / presence
↓
AR spatial placement
↓
Plant state system
The current direction is to use a lightweight object-detection model and run inference locally in Unity.
Potential components include:
- YOLO-based cup detection
- ONNX
- Unity Sentis
- AR Foundation raycasting
- AR anchors
The AI system is intended to recognize the physical cup itself rather than requiring a visible QR code or AR marker.
The initial technical approach is:
AI detects cup in 2D camera frame
↓
Estimate cup position
↓
Raycast against detected horizontal surface
↓
Create AR anchor
↓
Apply cup-height offset
↓
Place virtual content near / inside the cup
The first prototype prioritizes stable spatial placement over full 6DoF object tracking.
The interaction architecture is also being designed with future headset support in mind.
The mobile prototype does not currently require physical hand tracking, but plant interaction will be separated from device-specific input.
Future interaction events may include:
OnHandNear()
OnHandTouch()
OnHandMove()
OnHandLeave()
OnGrabStart()
OnGrabEnd()
This would allow future versions to connect the same plant behaviors to:
- Meta Quest hand tracking,
- Apple Vision Pro hand tracking,
- other spatial computing devices.
The goal is eventually to allow users to interact with the digital plant directly in space rather than through a touchscreen.
ARPlantCup is currently in an early prototype stage.
- Unity project structure
- iOS build pipeline
- AR Foundation
- ARKit integration
- AR Session
- XR Origin
- AR Plane Manager
- AR Raycast Manager
- AR Anchor Manager
- temporary plant prefab
- initial AR placement script
- iPhone AR placement testing
- stable plant placement
- replacement of temporary geometry with a plant model
- plant visual state system
- thirsty state
- watering response
- final plant form
- effective-drink state machine
- persistent local state
- AI cup detection
- automatic plant positioning
- cup-specific visual identities
- spatial hand interaction
- headset version
ARPlantCup/
├── UnityProject/
│ ├── Assets/
│ │ ├── Prefabs/
│ │ ├── Scenes/
│ │ ├── Scripts/
│ │ ├── Settings/
│ │ └── XR/
│ ├── Packages/
│ └── ProjectSettings/
│
├── .gitignore
└── README.md
Generated iOS/Xcode build output is intentionally excluded from version control.
The project is being developed incrementally.
The current order is:
1. Stable mobile AR placement
2. Plant visual behavior
3. Drinking-event state machine
4. Local persistence
5. AI cup recognition
6. Automatic cup-relative placement
7. Custom cup-specific digital art
8. Spatial hand interaction
9. Headset support
The priority is to validate the physical-digital interaction before introducing unnecessary infrastructure.
ARPlantCup is ultimately less about hydration tracking and more about giving physical objects a digital second layer.
Cups are a particularly interesting starting point because they are:
- personal,
- collectible,
- visually diverse,
- frequently handled,
- already connected to daily rituals.
A collection of cups could therefore become a collection of different digital environments.
Instead of ten cups sitting unused on a shelf, each could have its own visual identity and its own digital presence.
The cup remains a real object.
AR does not replace it.
It gives the object another reason to exist, another reason to be picked up, and another way to be experienced.