Augmenting pedestrian navigation systems with context-aware display of POIs

Abstract

Nowadays, pedestrian often relies on automated navigation systems to find their way in an unfamiliar environment at the expense of increasingly degrading one’s spatial knowledge and surrounding environment interaction. The reason for this is that because pedestrians are not required to solve spatial tasks along the route, they just depend on the abilities of the system, despite the fact that mental maps are built up from observations gathered during travel and direct interaction with the environment. This research investigated the augmentation of Google Maps turn-by-turn (TbT) pedestrian navigation system with context-aware visualization of the point of interests (POIs) along the path to enhance surrounding environment interaction and spatial knowledge of pedestrian. We conducted an experiment with six participant’s using a prototype application with and without dynamic visualization of POIs to evaluate its effect on participant’s spatial knowledge and interaction with the surrounding environment. Results suggested that participant’s using a prototype application augmented with a context-aware display of POIs showed better spatial knowledge and surrounding environment interaction compared to participant’s who use a prototype application without context-aware display of POIs.