Navigation Instructions Research Articles

Perceived Importance of Automotive HUD Information Items: a Study With Experienced HUD Users

Despite the long history of automotive head-up displays (HUD) systems and their increasing importance in the human-vehicle interface design, a question still remains about what they should display to best serve the driver. As an effort to contribute to the ergonomics design of automotive HUD systems, this paper determined the perceived importance of different HUD information items—fifty-one drivers with significant prior HUD use experience subjectively evaluated twenty-two information items in their importance. The information items were those displayed by existing commercial HUD systems. The results indicated that the information items varied greatly in perceived importance, and current speed, speed limit, turn-by-turn navigation instructions, maintenance warning, cruise control status, and low fuel warning were of highest importance. Also, participants’ prior experience of using an information item was found to greatly impact the average importance rating, suggesting that information items’ importance must be evaluated by those with sufficient information item use experience.

A Survey on Intelligent Car Parking System for Smart Cities

The primary goal of the intelligent parking systems is to find, allocate, and reserve the ‘best’ available car parking lot for a user who is driving a car in a particular area, and to provide him/her with navigation instructions for reaching this lot.

Does spatial information impact immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions?

The present study addresses the issue of whether spatial information impacts immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions. Subjects heard messages instructing them to move within a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional space consisting of four stacked grids displayed on a computer screen. They repeated the instructions orally and then followed them manually by clicking with a mouse on the grids. Two groups with identical instructions were compared; they differed only in whether the starting position was indicated before or after the instructions were given and repeated, with no differences in the manual movements to be made. Accuracy on both the oral repetition and manual movement responses was significantly higher when the starting position was indicated before the instructions. The results are consistent with the proposal that there is only a single amodal mental representation, rather than distinct verbal and nonverbal representations, of navigation instructions. The advantage for the before condition was found even for the oral repetition responses, implying that the creation of the amodal representation occurred immediately, while the instructions were being held in working memory. In practical terms, the findings imply that being able to form a mental representation of the movement path while being given verbal navigation instructions should substantially facilitate memory for the instructions and execution of them.

A review of assistive spatial orientation and navigation technologies for the visually impaired

The overall objective of this work is to review the assistive technologies that have been proposed by researchers in recent years to address the limitations in user mobility posed by visual impairment. This work presents an umbrella review. Visually impaired people often want more than just information about their location and often need to relate their current location to the features existing in the surrounding environment. Extensive research has been dedicated into building assistive systems. Assistive systems for human navigation, in general, aim to allow their users to safely and efficiently navigate in unfamiliar environments by dynamically planning the path based on the user's location, respecting the constraints posed by their special needs. Modern mobile assistive technologies are becoming more discrete and include a wide range of mobile computerized devices, including ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones. Technology can be used to determine the user's location, his relation to the surroundings (context), generate navigation instructions and deliver all this information to the blind user.

The Best States for Data Innovation

The Best States for Data Innovation

“Turn Left after the WC, and Use the Lift to Go to the 2nd Floor”—Generation of Landmark-Based Route Instructions for Indoor Navigation

People in unfamiliar environments often need navigation guidance to reach a destination. Research has found that compared to outdoors, people tend to lose orientation much more easily within complex buildings, such as university buildings and hospitals. This paper proposes a category-based method to generate landmark-based route instructions to support people’s wayfinding activities in unfamiliar indoor environments. Compared to other methods relying on detailed instance-level data about the visual, semantic, and structural characteristics of individual spatial objects, the proposed method relies on commonly available data about categories of spatial objects, which exist in most indoor spatial databases. With this, instructions like “Turn right after the second door, and use the elevator to go to the second floor” can be generated for indoor navigation. A case study with a university campus shows that the method is feasible in generating landmark-based route instructions for indoor navigation. More importantly, compared to metric-based instructions (i.e., the benchmark for indoor navigation), the generated landmark-based instructions can help users to unambiguously identify the correct decision point where a change of direction is needed, as well as offer information for the users to confirm that they are on the right way to the destination.

Augmenting Landmarks During the Head-Up Provision of In-Vehicle Navigation Advice

The use of landmarks during the provision of directions can greatly improve drivers' route-following performance. However, the successful integration of landmarks within in-vehicle navigation systems is predicated on the acquisition and deployment of good quality landmarks, as defined by their visibility, uniqueness, permanence, location etc., and their accurate and succinct depiction on in-vehicle displays and during accompanying verbal messages. Notwithstanding the inherent variability in the quality and propensity of landmarks within the driving environment, attending to in-vehicle displays and verbal messages while driving can distract drivers and heighten their visual and cognitive workload. Furthermore, vocal utterances are transient and can be littered with paralinguistic cues that can influence a driver's interpretation of what is said. In this paper, a driving simulator study is described aiming to investigate the augmentation of landmarks during the head up provision of route guidance advice – a potential solution to some of these problems. Twenty participants undertook four drives utilising a navigation system presented on a head up display (HUD) in which navigational instructions were presented as either: conventional distance-to-turn information; on-road arrows; or augmented landmarks (either an arrow pointing to the landmark or a box enclosing the landmark adjacent to the required turning). Participants demonstrated significant performance improvements while using the augmented landmark 'box' compared to the conventional distance-to-turn information, with response times and success rates enhanced by 43.1% and 26.2%, respectively. Moreover, there were significant reductions in eyes off-the-road time when using this approach, and it also attracted the lowest subjective ratings of workload. The authors conclude that there are significant benefits to augmenting landmarks during the head-up provision of in-car navigation advice.

Towards a Landmark-Based Pedestrian Navigation Service Using OSM Data

With the advent of location-aware smartphones, the desire for pedestrian-based navigation services has increased. Unlike car-based services where instructions generally are comprised of distance and road names, pedestrian instructions should instead focus on the delivery of landmarks to aid in navigation. OpenStreetMap (OSM) contains a vast amount of geospatial information that can be tapped into for identifying these landmark features. This paper presents a prototype navigation service that extracts landmarks suitable for navigation instructions from the OSM dataset based on several metrics. This is coupled with a short comparison of landmark availability within OSM, differences in routes between locations with different levels of OSM completeness and a short evaluation of the suitability of the landmarks provided by the prototype. Landmark extraction is performed on a server-side service, with the instructions being delivered to a pedestrian navigation application running on an Android mobile device.

Abstract P4-18-02: Peer navigation for people affected by hereditary breast, ovarian and related cancers: Results from the first six months

Abstract People affected by hereditary breast, ovarian, and related cancers (HBOC) due to a mutation in BRCA, or another gene that increases cancer risk, have unique support and information needs and face medical decisions that differ from survivors of sporadic breast cancer and from people at average risk for these cancers. Finding peers to talk to can be challenging, especially for people living outside of metropolitan areas. FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered) developed our Peer Navigation Program to provide personalized, expert-reviewed resources and 1:1 support for people affected by HBOC, including breast cancer survivors and people at high risk for breast cancer due to a mutation in BRCA or another gene that increases cancer risk. The program utilizes a custom database that matches individuals seeking support with trained Peer Navigators who have faced similar medical challenges and decisions. Users complete an intake form, providing basic demographic, medical, and geographic information in order to match them as closely as possible to a peer volunteer. The user selects from 21 specific topics of interest to them. This generates a personalized, expert-reviewed resource guide on each selected topics, which individuals can use to make informed, shared decisions with their healthcare providers. Trained Peer Navigators conduct one-hour phone calls with program users to discuss the personalized resources and provide non-judgmental emotional support. Our goal is to match users and complete the navigation process within one week from the time they submitted their intake form. After a navigation session, both the Peer Navigator and the program participant are asked to fill out an evaluation. All Peer Navigator volunteers undergo a written and telephone interview to assure their readiness to help others. Once they pass this screening process, they complete a series of online VolunteerFORCE Academy training webinars and complete a profile form providing information about their demographics, personal and medical situation, and medical decisions. Volunteers receive training on the following: FORCE 101, HBOC 101, Active Listening Skills and Peer Navigation instructions. All webinars have been reviewed and approved by a member of FORCE's Scientific Advisory Board and our Vice President of Education. The webinars stress several important themes, including: encouraging users to discuss information with medical experts, avoiding dispensing of personal or medical advice, and maintaining a non-judgmental perspective. We have 104 trained peer navigators, both male and female, ranging in age from 21 – 73. Both cancer survivors, as well as high-risk individuals are represented. Peer volunteers come from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations, and have made a variety of medical decisions about genetic testing, cancer screening, chemoprevention, and risk-reducing surgeries. The program launched in April 2016. We will present results from post-call evaluation surveys completed from April 1, 2016 through September 30, 2016. Data on most commonly requested topics, user satisfaction, ease of use, and intention to use the information in shared decision-making with their health care provider will be presented. Citation Format: Rezende LF, Cohen S, Rose D, Friedman SJ. Peer navigation for people affected by hereditary breast, ovarian and related cancers: Results from the first six months [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2016 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P4-18-02.

Modified Navigation Instructions for Spatial Navigation Assistance Systems Lead to Incidental Spatial Learning.

Spatial cognitive skills deteriorate with the increasing use of automated GPS navigation and a general decrease in the ability to orient in space might have further impact on independence, autonomy, and quality of life. In the present study we investigate whether modified navigation instructions support incidental spatial knowledge acquisition. A virtual driving environment was used to examine the impact of modified navigation instructions on spatial learning while using a GPS navigation assistance system. Participants navigated through a simulated urban and suburban environment, using navigation support to reach their destination. Driving performance as well as spatial learning was thereby assessed. Three navigation instruction conditions were tested: (i) a control group that was provided with classical navigation instructions at decision points, and two other groups that received navigation instructions at decision points including either (ii) additional irrelevant information about landmarks or (iii) additional personally relevant information (i.e., individual preferences regarding food, hobbies, etc.), associated with landmarks. Driving performance revealed no differences between navigation instructions. Significant improvements were observed in both modified navigation instruction conditions on three different measures of spatial learning and memory: subsequent navigation of the initial route without navigation assistance, landmark recognition, and sketch map drawing. Future navigation assistance systems could incorporate modified instructions to promote incidental spatial learning and to foster more general spatial cognitive abilities. Such systems might extend mobility across the lifespan.

Indoor Navigation Validation Framework for Visually Impaired Users

In this paper, we introduce the first validation framework of an indoor navigation system for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users, which is a significant step toward the development of cost effective indoor way-finding solutions for BVI users. The BVI users require detailed landmark-based navigation instructions that will help them arrive at the chosen destination independently. These users will interact with the navigation instructions on a smartphone using an accessible user interface. The validation framework includes the following three main components: 1) virtual reality-based simulation that simulates a BVI user traversing and interacting with the physical environment, developed using Unity game engine; 2) generation of action codes that emulate the avatar movement in the virtual environment, developed using a natural language processing parser of the navigation instructions; and 3) accessible user interface, which enables the user to access the navigation instructions, developed using Sikuli script library. We introduce a case study that illustrates the use of the validation tool using PERCEPT system. It is our strong belief that the validation framework we provide in this paper will encourage other developers to invent indoor navigation systems for BVI users. In addition, we would like to mention that this tool is the first step of validating an indoor navigation system and should be followed by trials with human subjects.

Indians of the Midwest

Reviewed by: Indians of the Midwest Alyssa L. Reil Indians of the Midwest, Newberry Library (Chicago), digital exhibition, publications.newberry.org/indiansofthemidwest. The driving concept behind the Newberry Library’s digital history site, Indians of the Midwest, is to provide the public with background information relevant to contemporary Native American issues. The website focuses on eight key subject areas: “People, Places and Time”; “The Homeland and Its Use”; “The Marketplace”; “Treaties”; “Identities”; “Property”; “Indian Imagery”; and “Are Midwest Indians Typical?” Within each of these subject areas is a historical overview, descriptions of current concerns and how Native history impacts those concerns, and explanations of the evidence provided. Project development occurred over several years and required the expertise of many individuals and groups. Dr. Brian Hosmer and Dr. Loretta Fowler, then of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library, formulated the idea in 2005. Brian Mornar, Scott Stevens, Xeno Media, and Mike Media Group assisted Dr. Fowler in the creation of the website. The project also relied on a network of Native and non-Native scholars, as well as a large advisory committee. Funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Programs division. Dr. Fowler created the site content utilizing the extensive Newberry Library collections. Her writing style is clear and concise, which allows the research to be accessible to a broad audience. The text itself raises important questions for the reader to reflect on, such as “What happened during the treaty negotiations?” and “What do Native people in the Midwest think about the moundbuilder sites?” Dr. Fowler provides nuanced answers that encompass the Native point of view and challenge widely accepted romantic versions of history. In this way, the exhibit refutes two popular and simplistic narratives: that of the benevolence of American settlers and that of [End Page 169] Native Americans as willing participants in land treaties. Whenever possible, Fowler provides direct quotes from historic Indian leaders from the Midwest or includes recent interviews with experts that provide contemporary perspective. A prominent example of this can be found near the end of the “Indian Imagery” subject area. Dr. Dave Edmunds speaks on the matter of romantic interpretations in a video that demonstrates the effects of American interests on the memory of the Indian leader, Tecumseh. Over time, the image of Tecumseh changed to reflect European cultural norms, such as the omission of his nose ring and the lightening of his complexion. Beyond his image, reports of his character shifted to accommodate popular values, going so far as to memorialize Tecumseh as an “American folk hero.” Dr. Edmunds’ discussion provides an accurate portrait of Tecumseh and refutes popular false depictions of the historic figure. Indians of the Midwest utilizes several different digital tools to increase reader comprehension. Interactive timelines provide brief scrolling histories by subject with complimentary illustrations and photographs. One particularly notable timeline is found under “The Marketplace” subpage, “Commercial Activity.” The timeline, entitled “Explore the History of Commercial Activity,” allows users to learn about various forms of economic participation by Native Americans. Artistic renderings and photographs accompany text blocks on the many stages of commerce, spanning from trade with Europeans to contemporary efforts seeking self-determination. An interactive map of the thirty-four federally recognized tribes in the Midwest allows the reader to visualize the locations of tribes, learn about their different cultures, and access direct links to official tribe websites. Videos with transcripts and both modern and historic photos add dimension. Quizzes allow readers to test their comprehension of the material and provide instructors with a tool to evaluate students’ understanding. For example, an instructor may utilize the subpage, “Legal Identity,” to help students understand the complicated nature of federal and tribal recognition, and then direct the students to the related quiz at the bottom of the page. Beyond these tools, the site also offers complete navigation instructions for novice users or those that have difficulty accessing content. The most exceptional aspect of this site is its emphasis on research. Not only does Indians of the Midwest present the public with a navigable history, it also provides users with directions for further research. Subject areas end with a...

Indoor navigation with smart phone IMU for the visually impaired in university buildings

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to design and test effective indoor navigation solutions for visually impaired people in situations where GPS, bluetooth or Wi-Fi signals are unavailable. The authors use the inertial measurement units (IMU), the compass and the barometer of a smart phone. Design/methodology/approach The authors have used commercial Android smart phones with IMU, compass and barometer to record a path and to give navigation instructions in an adapted way using a mobility-specific vocabulary. The method proposed is to save paths taking into account different indoor waypoints such as the stairs (change from one floor to another) and the change of direction of the trajectory of the path (e.g. one-fourth turn right or left), recording data from the IMU sensor’s, compass and barometer of the smart phone. Having this information and the characteristics of the each segment (distance, azimuth to the north and pressure) of the path, it is possible to provide functional navigation guidance to the visually impaired subject. Three different visually impaired people (one partially sighted and two fully blind) and three sighted people have tested the paths. The efficiency of the navigation is analyzed in terms of distance and time using the comparison between blind and sighted people. Findings The main finding is that it is possible to guide visually impaired people some hundreds of meters just using the sensors of a smart phone under certain conditions: the visually impaired person has to understand the guidance instructions and respect some strategies (e.g. not to walk diagonally across vast spaces). Additionally it is observed that the visually impaired participants walked distances, which are not much different to the optimal values. On the other hand; because of their hesitations using their white cane to find free paths, they take in some cases 50 percent more time to arrive (for a few minutes path, this time is not critical and even more efficient than looking for a guide). One thing to highlight is that even with this hesitation, the subjects arrived to the final destination. Originality/value This paper demonstrates how an IMU coupled to a compass and a barometer from a Smart Phone employing a spoken mobility language (e.g. next corridor to the left; at the end of the stairs turn right, turn left, etc.) can guide visually impaired people inside buildings.

The role of navigation instruction at intersections for older drivers and those with early Alzheimer’s disease

AimsOur purpose was to explore the effect of navigation instruction on older drivers’ driving performance at left turn intersections. Left turns at intersections are particularly complex because they require many perceptive and cognitive abilities under considerable time pressure. MethodsFifty-four participants were recruited: 18 drivers with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 18 neurologically healthy older drivers and 18 younger individuals. Various cognitive processes were measured, and 9 left turn maneuvers with or without navigation instruction were evaluated during an in-traffic road test. The psychomotor, planning and decision-making components involved in left turn were also analyzed closely. ResultsOnly older drivers (both healthy drivers and those with AD) were negatively affected by navigation instruction during the maneuver. The planning and decision-making components were more likely to be affected by the navigation instruction. ConclusionThis finding highlights the importance of carefully considering the use of navigation instructions when developing navigation systems. Adapting this instruction is necessary to simplify our understanding of the real-world driving environment and to avoid increasing the cognitive load of older drivers.

Cognitively Inspired Algorithm for Imprecise Navigation

This paper presents an algorithm, namely the private navigation algorithm. The aim of this algorithm is to bridge the gap between high quality navigation services and low quality of location information or imprecise data. Generally, the imprecision is due to the poor positioning technology and the algorithms use to protect location privacy. The benefits of the algorithm are at least two-fold: Firstly, it provides an efficient instructions for navigation under imprecision and secondly it supports location privacy protection while using navigation services. In common navigation systems, the navigation instructions generated are based on geometry oriented representation, e.g., shortest path which is based on the distance travelled and normally involves many turns. In human wayfinding, the navigation instruction is considered efficient if the instruction can reduce the cognitive load during the wayfinding activities as well as can guide users to a destination. The algorithm applies the simplest path computations for generating simple navigation instructions due to its ability to minimize the complexity of communicating the instructions. The research examines the efficiency of the algorithm based on several performance measurers. The research also takes into account the wayfinding heuristics such as the initial orientation and agent’s behavior (passive or active), that possibly can improve agent’s navigation performance. The cognitively motivated simplest cardinal direction weighting function is introduced which reflects the complexity of communicating cardinal instructions. The results show that the private navigation algorithm was efficient when it is incorporated with wayfinding heuristic for imprecise navigation.

Listen, Attend, and Walk: Neural Mapping of Navigational Instructions to Action Sequences

We propose a neural sequence-to-sequence model for direction following, a task that is essential to realizing effective autonomous agents. Our alignment-based encoder-decoder model with long short-term memory recurrent neural networks (LSTM-RNN) translates natural language instructions to action sequences based upon a representation of the observable world state. We introduce a multi-level aligner that empowers our model to focus on sentence "regions" salient to the current world state by using multiple abstractions of the input sentence. In contrast to existing methods, our model uses no specialized linguistic resources (e.g., parsers) or task-specific annotations (e.g., seed lexicons). It is therefore generalizable, yet still achieves the best results reported to-date on a benchmark single-sentence dataset and competitive results for the limited-training multi-sentence setting. We analyze our model through a series of ablations that elucidate the contributions of the primary components of our model.

Zadarski akvatorij u Pîrî Reisovoj Knjizi pomorstva iz 1526. godine: Pomorsko-geografske slike dijela hrvatskoga Jadrana

U radu su analizirane karte i tekstualni geografski opisi (peljar) zadarskog akvatorija iz djela Kitâb-ı Bahriye (Knjiga pomorstva) osmanskog moreplovca, pirata i kasnije admirala Pîrî Reisa. Komparativnom analizom sravnjeno je više primjeraka toga plovidbenog priručnika iz dosad poznatih istanbulskih izvora, ali i manje poznati primjerak iz Umjetničkog muzeja Walters (Walters Art Museum) u Baltimoru. Cilj je bio usporediti saznanja koja su o širem zadarskom prostoru posredstvom skrovitog rada stranca iz neprijateljskih redova, Pîrî Reisa, dobili Osmanlije u odnosu na radove suvremenih mu mletačkih kartografa, kao “domaćina” na istočnoj jadranskoj obali. Preispitivanje njegova rada iz povijesno kartografske ali i imagološko-geografske perspektive pokazuje da je uspio izbalansirati potrebu za nastankom navigacijski i geografski iznimno kvalitetnog materijala s vlastitom pozicijom stranca na istočnom Jadranu. Kartografske i narativne slike Pîrî Reisa o zadarskom akvatoriju predstavljaju odraz dosega i mogućnosti osmanske kartografije što omogućuje njezino preispitivanje. Razlog leži u činjenici da kvaliteta kartografskog i narativnog dijela produkcije Pîrî Reisa nije dosegnuta u onodobnim plovidbenim priručnicima. Korištena toponimija upućuje na to da se Pîrî Reis služio tuđim dostupnim izvorima, primjerice uputama za plovidbu, ali ih je kombinirao s brojnim vlastitim opažanjima. Stoga njegov rad predstavlja posve izvoran opis zadarskog akvatorija, koji zbog obilja novih podataka donosi potpuno nove znanstvene spoznaje.

Collaborative Navigation in an Unfamiliar Environment with People Having Different Spatial Aptitudes

This study addressed the issue of collaborative navigation by examining the types of information communicated in the processes of direction giving and receiving between people who guided each other simultaneously to a destination over the cell phone in a novel environment. When paired with a partner whose sense of direction differed greatly from their own, people found the collaboration difficult and took a longer time to verbally direct the partner to the destination. Landmarks that people used in giving navigational instructions differed depending on sense of direction. People with a good sense of direction adjusted route directions to their partners' wayfinding ability. Results from a detailed qualitative analysis of participants' verbal protocols and implications for personalized navigation tools are discussed.

Seamless Pedestrian Positioning and Navigation Using Landmarks

Many navigation services, such as car navigation services, provide users with praxic navigational instructions (such as “turn left after 200 metres, then turn right after 150 metres”), however people usually associate directions with visual cues (e.g. “turn right at the square”) when giving navigational instructions in their daily conversations. Landmarks can play an equally important role in navigation and routing services. Landmarks are unique and easy-to-recognise and remember features; therefore, in order to remember when exploring an unfamiliar environment, they would be assets. In addition, Landmarks can be found both indoors and outdoors and their locations are usually fixed. Any positioning techniques which use landmarks as reference points can potentially provide seamless (indoor and outdoor) positioning solutions. For example, users can be localised with respect to landmarks if they can take a photograph of a registered landmark and use an application for image processing and feature extraction to identify the landmark and its location. Landmarks can also be used in pedestrian-specific path finding services. Landmarks can be considered as an important parameter in a path finding algorithm to calculate a route passing more landmarks (to make the user visit a more tourist-focussed area, pass along an easier-to-follow route, etc.). Landmarks can also be used as a part of the navigational instructions provided to users; a landmark-based navigation service makes users sure that they are on the correct route, as the user is reassured by seeing the landmark whose information/picture has just been provided as a part of navigational instruction. This paper shows how landmarks can help improve positioning and praxic navigational instructions in all these ways.

Photographs or Mobile Maps? Displaying Landmarks in Pedestrian Navigation Systems

Research Question: Should photographs of landmarks be displayed in indoor pedestrian navigation systems? At which point of the navigational task can these interfaces support the user? Approach: Two different navigation prototypes were implemented: one of them used photographs of landmarks to explain the route, whereas the other one showed a mobile map. Method: The time it took the users to orient themselves was recorded with the smartphone application and served as a depended variable. Results: Users performed significantly better with the navigation prototype using photographs, especially if the navigation instruction is given at a route point with a high branching factor and thus high complexity.