Field-Based Validation of a Tactile Navigation Device

Abstract

In this paper, we present three field-based evaluations of a tactile land navigation system. In Experiment 1, we transition from a laboratory setting to rugged terrain used to train US Army soldier land navigation. Navigation in this challenging terrain requires careful attention to one's surroundings. Participants navigated 3 waypoints along 600 meters through heavily wooded terrain, using 1) map and compass, 2) standard alpha-numeric handheld GPS device, and 3) the tactile GPS system, while also responding to radio requests for information. Experiment 2 used the same challenging terrain during night operations, where participants must also search for live and silhouette targets, using 1) handheld GPS device, 2) head-mounted map-based GPS, and 3) the tactile GPS system. In addition to navigating, participants searched for silhouette and live (human) targets. Experiment 3 had participants navigate with 1) a commercial GPS arrow display, 2) the tactile GPS system, and 3) both together. We conclude that tactile navigation displays can be used in strenuous outdoor environments and can outperform visual displays under conditions of high cognitive and visual workload.

A Tactile Compass for Eyes-Free Pedestrian Navigation

“…Previous work indicates that tactile displays used to convey navigation information can improve the users' attention. It was found that people are able to spot more entities they are tasked to search for [3] and pay more attention to their immediate surroundings, such as obstacles and other people [14]. However, in the study presented here the participants neither felt less distracted nor spotted more benches.…”

“…It has been shown that vibro-tactile stimuli around the torso can easily be interpreted as pointing directions [27]. This kind of information presentation technique has successfully been used to "drag" people towards waypoints [28] while reducing the distraction at the same time [3,14]. With respect to map-based navigation it has been shown that cueing the general direction of the destination can improve the navigation performance and reduce the distraction [15,22].…”

“…[28,3,14]) and are thus hard not widely available. Other approaches or they require proactive interaction [13,19] to obtain the spatial information, which may be undesired be the user at times.…”

“…According to a study by Madden and Rainie [11] one in six cell-owing adults report that they have physically bumped into another person because they were distracted by talking or texting on their phone. At the same time, studies showed that tactile displays used to conveying navigational information can reduce this kind of distraction significantly [3,14]. Thus, the location of the destination to be displayed by the tactile compass should be conveyed by the sense of touch.…”

Improving Precision in Navigating Laparoscopic Surgery Instruments toward a Planar Target Using Haptic and Visual Feedback

“…An often reached conclusion is that congruent visual and vibrotactile feedback improves the quality of gestures, whereby vibrotactile feedback alone allows for faster responses than visual feedback, probably because of the lower induced cognitive load (Rodríguez et al, 2010). Vibrotactile cues for guidance have also been explored for pedestrian (Elliott et al, 2010) and vehicle (Van Erp et al, 2004;Ege et al, 2011) navigation, concluding that tactile feedback functions best in situations with high visual cognitive load and concurrent tasks.…”