Supporting map-based wayfinding with tactile cues

Abstract

Paper maps are a proven means for navigating in unfamiliar environments, however, they do not prevent people from getting lost or taking unwanted detours. A well-known issue is interpreting the map's geocentric content, which is known to become prone to errors when the map is not aligned to the environment. In this paper we report our investigation of providing a cue about the destination's location from an egocentric perspective in order to improve the interpretation of the map. We used a vibrotactile belt to continuously indicate a destination's direction relative to the user's orientation. In an outdoor field study we compared the performance of map-based navigation with and without the added tactile cue. We found evidence that people take shorter routes, consult the map less often, and were less often disoriented with the tactile cue. Furthermore, females found the tactile cue more useful and used it more often.

A Tactile Compass for Eyes-Free Pedestrian Navigation

“…The following measures were taken in order to assess the navigation performance and distraction in each condition: Navigation Performance. Similar to what has been reported in previous studies [21,20,15] on evaluations of navigation systems we measured navigation performance in terms of completion time and occurrences of disorientation events. The time the participants needed to reach the destination from the starting point of each condition was considered as completion time.…”

“…Previous studies show cueing the destination's direction by an egocentric tactile cue can improve the efficiency of navigating with a map [15,22]. In these studies the participants were wearing a tactile waist belt pointing at the destination while navigating by a map.…”

“…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]. Supporting map-based navigation is desirable, since turn-by-turn instructions may disengage users from the environment [9], lead to a worse understanding of the environments spatial layout [1], and are not necessarily more effective than maps [7].…”

“…It could be shown the even the complex visualisation of the location of the team mates in a computer game can be effectively processed despite demanding foreground tasks and lead to a significantly increased situation awareness [16]. It also could be shown that cueing the general direction of a travel destination can improve map-based navigation in virtual environments [22] and the real-world [15].…”

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

“…Van Erp et al [38], for example, studied several combinations of vibrational pulses, and were able to successfully guide users to walk between waypoints. Pielot et al [27] used a haptic belt with directional vibration to help users of paper maps orient the map correctly as they walked. The belt vibrated continuously, and users were able to incorporate this background cue into their navigation behaviour.…”