Is spatial intelligibility critical to the design of largescale virtual environments?

This paper discusses the concept of 'intelligibility', a concept usually attributed to the design of real-world environments and suggests how it might be applied to the construction of virtual environments. In order to illustrate this concept, a 3d, online, collaborative environment, AlphaWorld, is analyzed in a manner analogous to spatial analysis techniques applied to cities in the real world. The outcome of this form of spatial analysis is that AlphaWorld appears to be highly 'intelligible' at the small-scale, 'local neighborhood' level, and yet is completely 'unintelligible' at a global level. This paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this finding to virtual environment design plus future research applications

Navigation-by-music for pedestrians: an initial prototype and evaluation

Digital mobile music devices are phenomenally popular. The devices are becoming increasingly powerful with sophisticated interaction controls, powerful processors, vast onboard storage and network connectivity. While there are ‘obvious’ ways to exploit these advanced capabilities (such as wireless music download), here we consider a rather different application—pedestrian navigation. We report on a system (ONTRACK) that aims to guide listeners to their destinations by continuously adapting the spatial qualities of the music they are enjoying. Our field-trials indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes

Design advice for the inclusion of landmarks in vehicle navigation systems

The following advice has been developed from results of research studies carried out over the course of the REGIONAL project (1999-2002). These results, and the studies that produced them, are described in more detail in section 2 of this document. It also takes into account limited findings in the existing literature relating to the use of landmarks within navigation systems. The aim of REGIONAL was to support the inclusion of landmarks within navigation instructions by generating advice on: • What landmarks to choose and incorporate in databases • How to use them appropriately during the navigation task • The factors to take into account when presenting landmarks within system

Overcoming Spatial Deskilling Using Landmark-Based Navigation Assistance Systems

Abstract Background The repeated use of navigation assistance systems leads to decreased spatial orienting abilities. Previous studies demonstrated that augmentation of landmarks using auditory navigation instructions can improve incidental spatial learning when driving on a single route through an unfamiliar environment. Objective Based on these results, a series of experiments was conducted to further investigate both the impairment of spatial knowledge acquisition by standard navigation instructions and the positive impact of landmark augmentation in auditory navigation instructions on incidental spatial learning. Method The first Experiment replicated the previous setup in a driving simulator without additional visual route indicators. In a second experiment, spatial knowledge was tested after watching a video depicting assisted navigation along a real-world urban route. Finally, a third Experiment investigated incidental spatial knowledge acquisition when participants actively navigated through an unrestricted real-world,urban environment. Results All three experiments demonstrated better cued-recall performance for participants navigating with landmark-based auditory navigation instructions as compared to standard instructions. Notably, standard instructions were associated with reduced learning of landmarks at navigation relevant intersections as compared to landmarks alongside straight segments and the recognition of novel landmarks. Conclusion The results revealed a suppression of spatial learning by established navigation instructions, which were overcome by landmark-based navigation instructions. This emphasizes the positive impact of auditory landmark augmentation on incidental spatial learning and its generalizability to real-life settings. Application This research is paving the way for navigation assistants that, instead of impairing orienting abilities, incidentally foster spatial learning during every-day navigation. Précis This series of three experiments replicates the suppression of spatial learning by standard navigation instructions and the positive impact of landmark augmentation in auditory navigation instructions on incidental spatial learning during assisted navigation. Three experiments with growing degree of realism revealed the applicability and generalizability to real-life settings

DYNAMICS OF COLLABORATIVE NAVIGATION AND APPLYING DATA DRIVEN METHODS TO IMPROVE PEDESTRIAN NAVIGATION INSTRUCTIONS AT DECISION POINTS FOR PEOPLE OF VARYING SPATIAL APTITUDES

Cognitive Geography seeks to understand individual decision-making variations based on fundamental cognitive differences between people of varying spatial aptitudes. Understanding fundamental behavioral discrepancies among individuals is an important step to improve navigation algorithms and the overall travel experience. Contemporary navigation aids, although helpful in providing turn-by-turn directions, lack important capabilities to distinguish decision points for their features and importance. Existing systems lack the ability to generate landmark or decision point based instructions using real-time or crowd sourced data. Systems cannot customize personalized instructions for individuals based on inherent spatial ability, travel history, or situations. This dissertation presents a novel experimental setup to examine simultaneous wayfinding behavior for people of varying spatial abilities. This study reveals discrepancies in the information processing, landmark preference and spatial information communication among groups possessing differing abilities. Empirical data is used to validate computational salience techniques that endeavor to predict the difficulty of decision point use from the structure of the routes. Outlink score and outflux score, two meta-algorithms that derive secondary scores from existing metrics of network analysis, are explored. These two algorithms approximate human cognitive variation in navigation by analyzing neighboring and directional effect properties of decision point nodes within a routing network. The results are validated by a human wayfinding experiment, results show that these metrics generally improve the prediction of errors. In addition, a model of personalized weighting for users\u27 characteristics is derived from a SVMrank machine learning method. Such a system can effectively rank decision point difficulty based on user behavior and derive weighted models for navigators that reflect their individual tendencies. The weights reflect certain characteristics of groups. Such models can serve as personal travel profiles, and potentially be used to complement sense-of-direction surveys in classifying wayfinders. A prototype with augmented instructions for pedestrian navigation is created and tested, with particular focus on investigating how augmented instructions at particular decision points affect spatial learning. The results demonstrate that survey knowledge acquisition is improved for people with low spatial ability while decreased for people of high spatial ability. Finally, contributions are summarized, conclusions are provided, and future implications are discussed

Investigating Smartphones and AR Glasses for Pedestrian Navigation and their Effects in Spatial Knowledge Acquisition

Abstract–Moving in a complex and changing environment (rapid expansion of cities, creation of new transport lines, etc.) requires more and more capacity for path determination and following. This paper presents a protocol of a user study under progress. Its aim is to compare an application on AR Glasses and Smartphone to help pedestrians to memorize path following recommended landmarks

LandMarkAR: An application to study virtual route instructions and the design of 3D landmarks for indoor pedestrian navigation with a mixed reality head-mounted display

Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces on head-mounted displays (HMDs) have the potential to replace screen-based interfaces as the primary interface to the digital world. They potentially offer a more immersive and less distracting experience compared to mobile phones, allowing users to stay focused on their environment and main goals while accessing digital information. Due to their ability to gracefully embed virtual information in the environment, MR HMDs could potentially alleviate some of the issues plaguing users of mobile pedestrian navigation systems, such as distraction, diminished route recall, and reduced spatial knowledge acquisition. However, the complexity of MR technology presents significant challenges, particularly for researchers with limited programming knowledge. This thesis presents “LandMarkAR” to address those challenges. “LandMarkAR” is a HoloLens application that allows researchers to create augmented territories to study human navigation with MR interfaces, even if they have little programming knowledge. “LandMarkAR” was designed using different methods from human-centered design (HCD), such as design thinking and think-aloud testing, and was developed with Unity and the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK). With “LandMarkAR”, researchers can place and manipulate 3D objects as holograms in real-time, facilitating indoor navigation experiments using 3D objects that serve as turn-by-turn instructions, highlights of physical landmarks, or other information researchers may come up with. Researchers with varying technical expertise will be able to use “LandMarkAR” for MR navigation studies. They can opt to utilize the easy-to-use User Interface (UI) on the HoloLens or add custom functionality to the application directly in Unity. “LandMarkAR” empowers researchers to explore the full potential of MR interfaces in human navigation and create meaningful insights for their studies

Incorporating landmarks in driver navigation system design: an overview of results from the REGIONAL project

This paper presents an overview of results from the 2 year REGIONAL project. The aims of REGIONAL were to undertake research to enable landmarks to be an integral feature of future vehicle navigation systems. Results from the project, including 5 empirical road-based trials, are summarised. The main findings were: landmarks were widely used by drivers as key navigation cues; the incorporation of good landmarks within navigation instructions has the potential to considerably enhance vehicle navigation systems; although a wide range of landmarks are potentially useful to a driver, only a limited set, which displayed key characteristics, were consistently effective as navigation cues

Presence and quality of navigational landmarks: effect on driver performance and implications for design

Current vehicle navigation systems still predominantly use distance-to-turn information to enable a driver to locate a forthcoming manoeuvre. It has been proposed that the design of driver navigation aids can be improved through the incorporation of landmarks as key navigation cues. However, little research has investigated how the quality of the landmark affects driver behaviour. An empirical field trial in a real traffic environment was undertaken with 48 participants (minimum age 21, mean 44; minimum driving experience three years; mean km driven in the last year 19,000) in order to assess the effect that the quality of a landmark had on driver behaviour when navigating an unfamiliar, complex, urban route. The use of good landmarks (as opposed to poor landmarks or distance information) as key verbal navigation cues resulted in significant improvements in navigation performance, driving performance, and driver confidence immediately preceding a turn. The use of distance information to locate a turn resulted in significantly more glances to the in-vehicle display. Actual or potential applications of this research include guiding the design of effective and safe future vehicle navigation systems