Influence of Motivation on Wayfinding

This research explores the role of affect in the domain of human wayfinding by asking if increased motivation will alter the performance across various routes of increasing complexity. Participants were asked to perform certain navigation tasks within an indoor Virtual Reality (VR) environment under either motivated and not-motivated instructions. After being taught to navigate along simple and complex routes, participants were tested on both the previously learned routes and new routes that could be implicitly derived from the prior spatial knowledge. Finally, participants were tested on their ability to follow schematized instructions to explore familiar and unfamiliar areas in the VR environment. Performance of the various spatial tasks across the motivated and control groups indicated that motivation improved performance in all but the most complex conditions. Results of the empirical study were used to create a theoretical model that accounts for the influence of affect on the access of route knowledge. Results of the research suggest the importance of including past knowledge and affect of the traveler as components of future wayfinding systems

This is the tricky part: When directions become difficult

Automated route guidance systems, both web-based systems and en-route systems, have become commonplace in recent years. These systems often replace human-generated directions, which are often incomplete, vague, or in error. However, human-generated directions have the ability to differentiate between easy and complex steps through language in a way that is more difficult in automated systems. This article examines a set of human-generated verbal directions to better understand why some parts of directions are perceived as being more difficult than the remaining steps. Insights from this analysis will lead to recommendations to improve the next generation of automated route guidance systems

Knowledge Based Schematization of Route Directions

Abstract. It is common for a wayfinding task to involve travel across a familiar and an unfamiliar region that encompass different parts of the same route. Routes of this kind would entail schematized descriptions and the schematization would directly depend on the familiarity of the region being described. This paper presents a new formalization that identifies key conceptual elements of such routes and introduces a principle of “knowledge chunking ” that enables their schematization. This is followed by empirical evidence that supports this schematization of route directions for wayfinder’s who may perform such a task. The evidence suggests the need for future wayfinding systems to produce schematized route descriptions based on the user’s prior knowledge of a route. The formal approach presented is useful in implementing such a system and possible methods for its implementation are discussed.

Abstract Task Allocation in Teams for Launch and Range Operations

NASA’s operations include many teams of people who must do their own individual tasks and communicate about those tasks to other team members to accomplish team goals. Team tasks are crucial in the Range Operations at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Future systems to support such tasks may include software agents to alleviate heavy workload or time pressure by performing some tasks currently allocated to human operators. MORSE (Multi-agent Operation Range Simulation Environment) is an environment for three team members, encompassing some of the challenges facing Range Operations at KSC. The team must monitor incursions (e.g., aircraft or boats) that have entered the exclusion zone, an area bounded by launch impact lines. The human team has at its disposal radars that allow the team members to see incursions in the areas covered by the radars, and interceptor vehicles that can be appointed to intercept incursions. Radars and interceptor vehicles are shared resources that team members must acquire through coordination with each other and utilize for the performance of the team task. The overall team objective is to effect a safe launch where no incursions are left within the impact lines at launch time and resource consumption over the course of the task is minimized. In our initial experiment with this simulation environment we are comparing teams in which team members either have exclusive control over a resource type or control over an operating region.