Navigation your way: from spontaneous independent exploration to dynamic social journeys

Abstract

In this article we describe a novel approach to pedestrian navigation using bearing-based haptic feedback. People are guided in the general direction of their destination via a minimal directional cue, but additional exploration is stimulated by varying feedback based on the potential for taking alternative routes. This extreme navigation method removes the complexities of maps and direction following, concentrating on allowing pedestrians to actively explore their surroundings, rather than offering perfect, but passive, turn-by-turn guidance. We simulate and build two mobile prototypes to examine the possible benefits of this approach, then further extend its impact by considering how social media might be incorporated to provide a real-time, dynamically-evolving map of physical locations. The successful use of our mobile prototypes is demonstrated in a realistic field trial, and we discuss the results and interesting participant behaviours that were recorded, validating the predictions from their earlier simulation. We continue by simulating the use of publicly-posted status updates and pictures as a proxy for location mapping, showing how these methods can produce comparable navigation results to real field trials, highlighting their potential as tools for real-world social journeys.

A review of volunteered geographic information quality assessment methods

“…These objects/surroundings can be spatially referenced either by giving geographic coordinates and/or user-assigned geospatial descriptions of these photographs in the form of textual labels. These photo sharing websites have several uses such as environmental monitoring (Fuchs et al 2013), pedestrian navigation (Robinson et al 2012), event and human trajectory analysis (Andrienko et al 2009), for creating geographical gazetteers (Popescu et al 2008), or even to complement institutional data sources in your locality (Milholland and Pultar 2013).…”

Investigating and supporting undirected navigation for runners

“…We explicitly avoided non-visual feedback techniques (e.g. [3,6]) as they cannot provide the area overview at a glance. The Sony Smartwatch contains a vibration motor, and there may be a use for it (e.g.…”

“…Whilst non-visual approaches (e.g. vibrating a device when pointed in the "correct" direction [6]) could provide an indication back to the start location of a run, it is difficult to provide an area overview (we return to this in future work). It is clear that navigation support for runners is desirable, but existing techniques (including maps) that focus on reaching a known destination are not suitable.…”

“…Such navigation is significantly more diverse than the directed, turn-by-turn navigation adopted from car GPS systems [1], where users are explicitly directed to a destination. For example, pedestrians often wander to explore an area [6]. In addition navigation is undertaken during diverse activities (e.g.…”

Director

“…[5,6,2]. Audio Bubbles [5] was an attempt at audio navigation that uses simple non-speech sounds to signify proximity to a point of interest.…”