Choose your own route!
A new navigation system lets pedestrians decide for themselves which route to take in a given area. In this way, they can better acquire spatial knowledge and have a lot of fun during navigation.
Finding the way from A to B in the urban jungle? No problem thanks to navigation systems such as Google Maps. However, many people are hardly aware of their surroundings when using such systems and do not acquire much spatial knowledge. And they often feel patronized because they can't choose the route according to their wishes.
Researchers at the Department of Geography have now developed a prototype navigation system that does not restrict users to a predefined route. Rather, it defines an area on the map consisting of all potential routes they can take to reach the destination within a certain time. They decide for themselves: Do I walk along the main street or would I rather stroll through the park? As the user approaches the destination, the so-called "Potential Route Area" continuously adapts. Within this area, users can freely choose their own route and alter it anytime, and still arrive at their destination within the desired detour tolerance. Prominent landmarks such as a broadcast tower or a church are displayed on the map and help users find their way.
-
- Screenshots of the novel navigation system and Google Maps
- Screenshots of the novel navigation system (left) and Google Maps (right) in the two test areas in the Swiss city of Winterthur (top and bottom).
In the Swiss city of Winterthur, Thomas Mathis – as part of his master's thesis – had the test subjects use both the new system and the conventional turn-by-turn navigation guidance from Google Maps to get from a specified starting point to a destination. It was recorded which route users chose, how long they were on the road and how much they interacted with the navigation system.
More spatial knowledge – and more fun!
With the novel system, the test subjects rarely followed the shortest route and also spent slightly longer on the road. However, they were better at acquiring spatial knowledge about the environment, demonstrated by their more detailed post-test drawings of the chosen route and their better estimation of directions. And they reported having had significantly more fun than when using Google Maps.
For the time being, this new navigation system remains a prototype. There are currently no plans for commercial use. "But our study shows that people appreciate the feeling of controlling a navigation system rather than being controlled by it", say the study's authors, Haosheng Huang, Thomas Mathis and Robert Weibel. "In addition, people actively engage with the environment and learn a lot about the space they're moving through." In this way, the useful could be combined with the pleasurable in many everyday situations: building up the "mental map" that helps us find our way independently in the urban jungle.
Literature
Haosheng Huang, Thomas Mathis & Robert Weibel (2021) Choose your own route – supporting pedestrian navigation without restricting the user to a predefined route, Cartography and Geographic Information Science
Thomas Mathis (2020): "Choose your own route" - Supporting pedestrian navigation without restricting the user to a predefined route. MSc Thesis, Department of Geography
More news
- Grassland ecosystems become more resilient with age
- Which glaciers are the largest in the world?
- Unlocking Environmental Narratives
- Relationships to nature go both ways – care and attention for nature bring satisfaction and joy for Swiss Alpine farmers
- «Ober mal wett hürate?» oder die Geographie der Schweizerdeutschen Grammatik
- Diverse forests outyield monocultures
- Drought-exposure history improves recovery of grassland communities from subsequent drought
- Satellite monitoring of biodiversity moves within reach
- Gone with the wind? How small birds move to the wintering grounds
- Improving soil health in tropical regions
- Climate and soil determine distribution of plant traits
- Getting the big picture of biodiversity
- Capturing mood and affective states via Twitter
- What If Our History Was Written In Our Grammar?
- Can large volcanic eruptions make glaciers great again?
- New model simulates the tsunamis caused by iceberg calving
- Deep forest soils produce greenhouse gases as temperatures climb
- Global glacier retreat has accelerated
- 1918 Pandemic Second Wave Had Fatal Consequences
- Earlier than expected
- Locked-in and living delta pathways in the Anthropocene
- Staying home for nightlife
- Directed Species Loss from Species-Rich Forests Strongly Decreases Productivity
- Daily Mobility for Healthy Aging
- Water Towers of the world ranked on vulnerability
- Himalayan lakes are exacerbating glacial melt
- Gaming for better data
- Poor communication torpedoes a second national park
- Black mystery in the Amazon River
- Find your way back with intelligent navigation systems
- The emotional entanglements of smartphones in the field
- From fires to oceans
- Ice on a stick in soil research
- Melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise at ever greater rates
- Do financial incentives motivate farmers to conserve land?
- How landscapes contribute to our well-being
- Ice-sheet growing from the base
- Charcoal: Major Missing Piece in the Global Carbon Cycle
- Extracting mobility patterns from Call Detail Records
- Mapping functional diversity of forests with remote sensing
- Unaccompanied minor asylum seekers - feelings of belonging in educational experiences
- The effect of anxiety and spatial abilities in route learning from maps
- Making Concessions at the Mining Frontier in Burkina Faso
- New method for analyzing tracking data enables better understanding of behavioral patterns of animals
- Who is responsible for negative effects of anthropogenic climate change?
- Glaciers in the Karakoram Mountains are in balance since the 1970s
- The mega-event syndrome
- Historically unprecedented global glacier decline in the early 21st century
- Variability and evolution of global land surface phenology
- A literature-based estimation of fire-derived organic matter in soils
- Neoliberal austerity and the marketisation of elderly care
- Institutional shopping for natural resource management in a protected area and indigenous territory in the Bolivian Amazon