Mobile Navigation System Research Articles

NavigateMe : An In-Building Navigation Application

For some people to reach their destination and complete their daily tasks, navigation systems serve as an aid, a tool, or an assistance. Currently, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) lacks an in-building navigation system that could assist users, particularly new students, in finding their way to the location of their choice. This paper has two goals. This study first examines the current campus navigation systems and the relevant research article. Second, this work suggests a mobile navigation system that facilitates user navigation within Kuliyyah of Information and Communication Technology (KICT) facilities. Methods used to build the application were according to Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The suggested navigation application, NavigateMe, helps users navigate within buildings by providing sequential instructions and images of landmarks along the route. It stands out for being usable even in the event of sporadic internet connectivity. In conclusion, visitors and the IIUM community, particularly the new students of KICT, will benefit from an in-building navigation application like NavigateMe to effortlessly reach their destination.

Individual Mobile Navigation System of Way Counting

The problem of step counting has been considered for personal navigation while walking and using mobile sensors with low accuracy. Three primary approaches to computing the acceleration vector magnitude in time domain have enabled step counting. When analyzing data from mobile phone sensors for various pedestrian kinds, environmental factors, and their mobility patterns, several methodologies were compared. Except for the approach of normalized auto-correlation based step counting, which only processes short distances, the walking trajectories have been chosen to be long enough (at least 100 meters) to produce statistically representative results. The specifications for a specific step counting system have been developed.

Wrist-worn Vibrotactile Navigation System for Cyclists

Mobile navigation systems are getting more and more common, and with the rise of smartphones, nearly everyone has access to them via mobile phone apps. Despite the widespread use of mobile apps for navigation, only few solutions for bicyclists exist. These solutions however rely on the user to either look at their phone screen or wear headphones. This poses a risk to the user’s safety by taking away attention from the road conditions. Prior studies have suggested that a vibrotactile navigation system can perform similarly to already existing visual and auditory solutions. Such a system also seems to be less distracting than existing ones. This study presents a working prototype than can be used to navigate urban environments on a bicycle.

Landmark selection for route instructions: At which corner of an intersection is the preferred landmark located?

Cognitive studies showed that good landmarks–salient objects in the environment–make it easier for recipients of route instructions to find their way to the destination. Adding landmarks to route instructions also improves mobile navigation systems for pedestrians. But, which landmarks do people consider most helpful when giving route instructions? Four experiments explored this question. In the first experiment, the environment, including the route and landmarks, was presented on a map. The landmarks were located at the four corners of a right-angled intersection. Participants had to select those landmark-based route instructions they considered most helpful. In all other experiments, the environment was presented from an egocentric perspective, either in a video or as a sequence of pictures of intersections. Participants had to select those landmarks they would use in a route instruction. All landmarks had the same visual and semantic salience. The positions of the participants at the intersection were varied. Results show that participants consistently selected landmarks at the side of the road into which they had to turn. Moreover, the participants' position at the intersection affected whether they selected landmarks before or behind the decision point. These results have consequences for human spatial cognition research and for the automatic selection of landmarks in mobile pedestrian navigation systems.

Depth map generationfor mobile navigation systemsbased onobjects localization in images

This paperis aimedto develop a method for a depth map generation based on objects localization in images, obtained througha stereopair. The proposed solution describes theobjects by the following informative elements: contours, interestpoints (points of the greatest curvature of the contour), center of mass of the object. Moreover, to describe the contour of the image, it is proposed to use methods with adjustable detailing, basedonthe wavelet transform, which has frequency-selective properties. The novelty of this method is the possibility of obtaining an approximate depth map by simplifying the calculation of stereo image difference values, which is traditionally used to generate a depth map. Software was developed based on the proposed solutions. Modeling confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The proposed method makes it possible to significantly reduce the number of computational operations and, consequently, improve depth map generation performance and recommend the proposed method for mobile navigation systems operating in conditions of limited computing and energy resources. The method provides object detection and spatial positioning, makes it possible to obtain reliable information about the distance to objects for other subsystems that use technical vision in their operation, for example, navigation systems for visually impaired people, robotic devices, etc.

HiVG: A hierarchical indoor visibility-based graph for navigation guidance in multi-storey buildings

A hierarchical data model is needed in mobile navigation systems to generate route instructions on multiple levels of detail (LODs), thereby adapting to users' various information needs during navigation. In complex multi-storey indoor environments, existing hierarchical data models mainly rely on logical graphs that represent indoor cellular spaces as nodes and adjacency as edges. Due to the lack of precise geometry, however, they have limited capability to support the accurate computation of walking distance and directions, which are essential in route instructions. This article proposes a hierarchical indoor visibility-based graph (HiVG) for navigation guidance in multi-storey buildings and presents a HiVG generation algorithm. The algorithm's input is an indoor visibility graph (iVG) in which the orientations of nodes to corridor areas are represented. In the algorithm, first the functions of edges in indoor route instructions are identified, after which an edge function-based graph partitioning iteration is performed to generate each level of the HiVG. Experiments with three buildings of different geometric configurations demonstrate the potential of our HiVG generation algorithm. Furthermore, the conducted case studies show that the proposed HiVG is appropriate for generating indoor route instructions on multiple LODs.

Choose your own route – supporting pedestrian navigation without restricting the user to a predefined route

ABSTRACT State-of-the-art mobile pedestrian navigation systems often employ GPS or other positioning methods for continuous tracking of users, and thus provide them with in-situ turn-by-turn route guidance along a desired route. However, studies have shown that user experience and acquisition of spatial knowledge decrease due to the “blind” following of such turn-by-turn navigation systems. This paper proposes a novel interface concept for mobile pedestrian navigation systems that provide navigation guidance without restricting the users to a predefined route. Specifically, the proposed novel user interface was based on the concept of the Potential Route Area (PRA), which defines a dynamic area consisting of all potential routes not longer than a certain detour the user is willing to accept. Within that area, the user can freely choose his/her own route and alter it anytime, and can still arrive at the destination within the desired detour tolerance. As a proof of concept, the proposed PRA-based system was then tested against a conventional turn-by-turn navigation system, represented by Google Maps, in a real-world navigation experiment, which revealed that the acquisition of spatial knowledge and user experience were substantially improved when using the PRA-based system. This can be explained by the fact that the PRA-based system provides its users with more freedom in choosing their own route.

Indoor landmark selection for route communication: the influence of route-givers’ social roles and receivers’ familiarity with the environment

ABSTRACT When conveying information about routes to follow in complex environments, human route-givers adapt to route-receivers’ familiarity with the environments in their choice of landmarks. Meanwhile, as route-givers themselves have experienced the environments within a social role, the landmarks they select may also differ significantly. This research investigated how these two factors influence landmark selection when communicating routes in indoor environments. Two groups of participants were recruited to conduct indoor landmark selection experiments for familiar and unfamiliar route-receivers in a multi-functional university building. The results show an interaction effect between these factors in indoor landmark selection. These findings lay an empirical ground for developing human-centered mobile navigation systems that can adapt to users’ social roles and their familiarity with the environment.

Familiarity-dependent computational modelling of indoor landmark selection for route communication: a ranking approach

ABSTRACT Landmarks play key roles in human wayfinding and mobile navigation systems. Existing computational landmark selection models mainly focus on outdoor environments, and aim to identify suitable landmarks for guiding users who are unfamiliar with a particular environment, and fail to consider familiar users. This study proposes a familiarity-dependent computational method for selecting suitable landmarks for communicating with familiar and unfamiliar users in indoor environments. A series of salience measures are proposed to quantify the characteristics of each indoor landmark candidate, which are then combined in two LambdaMART-based learning-to-rank models for selecting landmarks for familiar and unfamiliar users, respectively. The evaluation with labelled landmark preference data by human participants shows that people’s familiarity with environments matters in the computational modelling of indoor landmark selection for guiding them. The proposed models outperform state-of-the-art models, and achieve hit rates of 0.737 and 0.786 for familiar and unfamiliar users, respectively. Furthermore, semantic relevance of a landmark candidate is the most important measure for the familiar model, while visual intensity is most informative for the unfamiliar model. This study enables the development of human-centered indoor navigation systems that provide familiarity-adaptive landmark-based navigation guidance.

Research on the Application of Mobile Navigation System Based on Cloud Computing

At present, with the increasing demand of users for product experience, it is very important to improve the user experience of mobile guided products. The purpose of this paper is to apply the user experience design ideas and methods to the design and development of mobile guide system through cloud computing, and to explore the target user’s acceptance of the user experience of the computer system. Based on these research purposes, this paper analyzed the fit point between mobile guide and user needs, the construction process of user experience design of mobile guide system, and the implementation of user experience design process in actual research and development, which provided theoretical basis and practical methods for improving product user experience and user satisfaction.

Crowdsensing-Based Gamification for Collective Assistance for Post-Era of Coronavirus Epidemic in Community Living

Crowdsensing exploits the sensing abilities offered by smart phones and users' mobility. Users can mutually help each other as a community with the aid of crowdsensing. The potential of crowdsensing has yet to be fully realized for improving public health. A protocol based on gamification to encourage data sharing and mutual assistance is proposed. The game is called “Lemmings,” which stands for location-based mutual and mobile information navigation system; it is based on a classical video game where a group of creatures have to work and win through the puzzle game together. This game includes an asynchronized messaging system where a player may proactively seek for answers or advice by depositing a question on the messaging server. The server will automatically disseminate the question, which is related to a specific location, to a group of users who are either within the proximity currently or have just recently been there. The users/players are encouraged to help each other in post-pandemic Corona virus period; karma scoring distinguishes the most helpful users in the community.

Narratives of Women Using a 24-Hour Ride-Hailing Transport System to Increase Access and Utilization of Maternal and Newborn Health Services in Rural Western Kenya: A Qualitative Study.

.Between 1990 and 2015, Kenya had a 0.9% annual reduction in maternal mortality, one of the lowest reductions globally. This slow decline was linked to the relatively low utilization of delivery services. We designed a mobile phone–enhanced 24-hour transport navigation system coupled with personalized and interactive gestation-based text messages (MAccess) to address maternal child health service utilization. The primary purpose of this analysis is to explore the ways in which pregnant and postnatal women made decisions regarding care-seeking for pregnancy and childbirth services, the processes of getting care from home to the hospital as well their perceptions on how the MAccess intervention affected their pregnancy and childbirth care-seeking and utilization experience. We conducted semistructured, individual interviews with 18 postpartum women. Participants were purposively sampled. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. For participants in this study, all three delays interacted in a complex manner to affect women’s utilization of pregnancy and childbirth services. Even though women were aware of the benefits of skilled birth attendance, other health system factors such as opening hours, or health workers’ attitudes still deterred women from delivering in health facilities. The MAccess innovation was highly acceptable to women throughout pregnancy and childbirth and helped them navigate the complex and layered individual, infrastructural, and health system factors that put them at risk of adverse maternal and newborn outcomes. These findings emphasize that an integrated approach, which addresses all delays simultaneously, is important for reducing perinatal morbidity and mortality.

An AR mobile navigation system integrating indoor positioning and content recommendation services

Over the past few years, with the prevalence of smart mobile devices, several well-known museums and researchers have developed mobile navigation systems to improve the navigation effect for museum visitors. However, most of these systems lack efficient content recommendation, indoor positioning, and augmented reality (AR) display functions, and this situation causes difficulty for visitors to have a personalized and efficient navigation experience. This paper presents an augmented reality mobile navigation system that supports indoor positioning and content recommendation services, which aims to provide personalized suggestions corresponding to the user’s context through the analysis of the interest and location information of visitors. Moreover, combined with the developed markerless augmented reality display functions, this system could effectively enrich and improve visitor’s navigation experience.

Experimental studies of a convolutional neural network for application in the navigation system of a mobile robot

Presently, convolutional neural networks grow rapidly in the field of objects recognition and obstacle detection in the image. Recognition is one of the most important problems for development of modern mobile navigation systems. We propose to link up an artificial neural network as an additional or a backup solution for higher safety of these systems while the obstacles are being detected. The purpose of this work is to conduct experimental studies in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an artificial neural network for practical application in navigation systems for mobile robots. The largest possible detection accuracy and training time of the artificial neural network have been measured experimentally with the use of two methods. There has been evaluated the effect of the subset size of the epoch influencing the accuracy of detection. The dataset structure has been analyzed and the direct relationship between the accuracy of detection and the surface value of the recognized object was found. The mobile robot utilization and the frequency of processed frames from the video stream during the operation of the artificial neural network have been measured.

Analysis of Advantages and Drawbacks of the Mobile Navigation System «Hudway» and Its Competitors

Статья посвящена анализу достоинств и недостатков наиболее популярных в настоящее время на рынке программного обеспечения мобильных приложений для навигации. Популярность такого рода приложений в целом очень высока, что определяется высоким уровнем мобильности современного общества и необходимостью оперативной навигации, в первую очередь, в городском пространстве. Насыщенность рынка программным обеспечением разных производителей довольно велика, высокая конкуренция диктует требования к функционалу и сервисам, предоставляемым пользователю, в связи с чем производители для повышения конкурентоспособности вынуждены расширять дополнительные сервисы. Особое внимание уделяется рассмотрению преимуществ и недостатков навигационной программы «Hudway», разрабатываемой компанией «Русские информационные технологии», и сравнению ее характеристик с параметрами существующих программ навигации, представленных на рынке. Важной особенностью данной программы является предоставление сервиса, обеспечивающего отражение маршрута на лобовом стекле автомобиля, что позволяет водителю комфортно и безопасно пользоваться навигацией, не отрывая взгляда от дороги. Авторами проведено практическое исследование рассмотренных в статье мобильных приложений. Особое внимание уделяется проблемам обеспечения безопасности при применении программ в процессе управления транспортным средством и повышению экономичности стиля вождения.

Некоторые алгоритмы определения неизвестного начального местоположения АНПА на основе информации от одномаяковой мобильной навигационной системы

Некоторые алгоритмы определения неизвестного начального местоположения АНПА на основе информации от одномаяковой мобильной навигационной системы

Implementation of Voyage Assistant Module in Mobile Navigation System for Inland Waters

Implementation of Voyage Assistant Module in Mobile Navigation System for Inland Waters

Technology of Spatial Data Geometrical Simplification in Maritime Mobile Information System for Coastal Waters

Abstract The paper undertakes the subject of spatial data pre-processing for marine mobile information systems. Short review of maritime information systems is given and the focus is laid on mobile systems. The need of spatial data generalization is underlined and the concept of technology for such generalization in mobile system is presented. The research part of the paper presents the results of analyzes on selected parameters of simplification in the process of creating mobile navigation system for inland waters. In the study authors focused on selected layers of system. Models of simplification for layers with line features and with polygons were tested. The parameters of tested models were modified for the purposes of study. The article contains tabular results with statistics and spatial visualization of selected layers for individual scales.

Development of Autonomous Mobile Robot that Can Navigate in Rainy Situations

[abstFig src='/00280004/02.jpg' width='300' text='Navigation under strong rainy condition' ] The Real World Robot Challenge (RWRC), a technical challenge for mobile outdoor robots, has robots automatically navigate a predetermined path over 1 km with the objective of detecting specific persons. RWRC 2015 was conducted in the rain and every robot could not complete the mission. This was because sensors on the robots detected raindrops and the robots then generated unexpected behavior, indicating the need to study the influence of rain on mobile navigation systems – a study clearly not yet sufficient. We begin by describing our robot’s waterproofing function, followed by investigating the influence of rain on the external sensors commonly used in mobile robot navigation and discuss how the robot navigates autonomous in the rain. We conducted navigation experiments in artificial and actual rainy environments and those results showed that the robot navigates stably in the rain.

Stress Supports Spatial Knowledge Acquisition during Wayfinding with Mobile Maps

GIScience 2016 Short Paper Proceedings Stress Supports Spatial Knowledge Acquisition during Wayfinding with Mobile Maps P. Frei 1 , K.-F. Richter 1 , S. I. Fabrikant 1 Geography Department, University of Zurich Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland {patrice.frei|kai-florian.richter|sara.fabrikant}@geo.uzh.ch Abstract We detail a novel empirical approach with in-situ psycho-physiological measurements to assess how stress influences spatial knowledge acquisition, mobile map use, and wayfinding success when performing a navigation task in an unknown urban environment. We recorded pedestrians’ navigation trajectories, mobile map interactions, eye movements, and galvanic skin responses, with varying stress conditions. Our results clearly indicate that stress supports navigators in forming good survey knowledge, possibly due to enhanced engagement. This seems to emerge from their goal-oriented interaction with the mobile map. Our study results contradict earlier findings, contribute to the on-going debate whether using mobile navigation systems are harmful for humans’ capacity to acquire environmental knowledge during navigation, and highlight the important influence of people’s individual spatial abilities and emotional states on their knowledge acquisition. 1. Introduction Does spatial knowledge acquisition deteriorate when people rely on mobile navigation assistance, as prior studies suggest (e.g., Gardony et al. 2013)? If yes, does it relate to disengagement from the navigated environment (Leshed et al. 2008), and/or from the wayfinding decision-making process (Bakdash et al. 2008)? These questions motivated our study. As increasing empirical evidence suggests that navigation performance can be predicted by varying individual differences, for example, spatial abilities (Hegarty et al. 2002), personality traits, such as anxiety (Thoresen et al. 2016), or emotional states, such as stress (Wilkening and Fabrikant 2011), we wondered how individual differences might interact with spatial knowledge acquisition and mobile map use. 2. Methods Thirtyfive members (f:2; m:33) of the Swiss Armed Forces International Command (SWISSINT) participated in our study. Before the experiment participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Test (in German), the perspective-taking/spatial orientation test, and the building memory test. We divided participants into two (‘stress’ | ‘control’) groups by median-split on their perspective-taking test results, such that each group contained the same number of ‘high’ and ‘low’ performing participants. Participants were asked to navigate from a start to an end location along five waypoints in a given sequence, in an environment unfamiliar to them. They were given a mobile map application running on a tablet computer, which displayed start and end locations, the waypoints, and participants’ current (GPS) position, but no prescribed routes. Participants wore a mobile eye tracker connected to a laptop carried in a backpack, and a wrist-band 1 that recorded various psycho-physiological signals (e.g., galvanic skin responses http://bodymonitor.de/smartband/