ARKit session paused and not resumed

I figured you chose the answer and this answer is what Apple recommends, you can restart your AR session. You cannot pause / resume the session because the device stops tracking it after you log out of your controller representing the ARSceneView and stops tracking the position of your device relative to the objects you placed in the scene.

Anyway, I managed to restart the session, essentially destroying all aspects of my session and restoring them when my view reappears or a button is clicked.

I'll post some sample code here. It's in Objective-C because my project was written in this, but it might help future people with the same question.

-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidAppear:animated]
    [self setupScene];
    [self setupSession];
}

- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
    [self destroySession];
    [self destroyScene];
}

- (void)setupScene {

// Setup the ARSCNViewDelegate - this gives us callbacks to handle new
// geometry creation
    self.sceneView.delegate = self;

// A dictionary of all the current planes being rendered in the scene
    self.planes = [NSMutableDictionary new];

// Contains a list of all the boxes rendered in the scene
    self.boxes = [NSMutableArray new];

// Show statistics such as fps and timing information
    self.sceneView.showsStatistics = YES;
    self.sceneView.autoenablesDefaultLighting = YES;

    SCNScene *scene = [SCNScene new];

    [self.sceneView setScene:scene];

    self.sceneView.scene.physicsWorld.contactDelegate = self;   
}

- (void)setupSession {

    // Create a session configuration
    ARWorldTrackingConfiguration *configuration = [ARWorldTrackingConfiguration new];
    //ARWorldTrackingSessionConfiguration *configuration = [ARWorldTrackingSessionConfiguration new]; This has been deprecated in favor of the previous line in XCode 9 beta 5. 

    // Specify that we do want to track horizontal planes. Setting this will cause the ARSCNViewDelegate
    // methods to be called when scenes are detected
    //configuration.planeDetection = ARPlaneDetectionHorizontal;

    // Run the view session
    [self.sceneView.session runWithConfiguration:configuration options:ARSessionRunOptionResetTracking];
}


-(void)destroyScene {
    bottomPlane = nil;
    [self.sceneView setScene:nil];
    [self.sceneView setDebugOptions:nil];
    self.boxes = nil;
    self.planes = nil;
    self.sceneView.delegate = nil;  
}

-(void)destroySession {
    [self.sceneView.session pause];
    [self.sceneView setSession:nil];
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

These destruction methods are used when the view disappears. I also restart my AR session on a button press, but this is not with these methods. It looks like this:

-(void)resetPressed{
    NSLog(@"Reset Pressed");
    [_sceneView.session pause];


    SCNScene *scene = [[SCNScene alloc] init];
    [_sceneView setScene:scene];
    [_sceneView.scene.rootNode enumerateChildNodesUsingBlock:^(SCNNode * _Nonnull child, BOOL * _Nonnull stop) {
        [child removeFromParentNode];
    }];

    ARWorldTrackingConfiguration *configuration = [[ARWorldTrackingSessionConfiguration ARWorldTrackingConfiguration] init];
    [_sceneView.session runWithConfiguration:configuration options:ARSessionRunOptionResetTracking | ARSessionRunOptionRemoveExistingAnchors];
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Hope it helps.