Hello Everyone This is Avinash from University of Technology Sydney
I am presenting one of our late-breaking work
Which is a technique to improve spatial navigation learning
We called it Virtual Global Landmark.
Navigation is one of the important things for humans and every living being, which involved
active exploration of the environment and learning from cues in active exploration like tress, building, house, shops, etc.
Once you know the first two things, you are able to freely and efficiently move in those
known spaces you already explored.
Current technology allows easily move around in unknown spaces using commercially available
maps such as Google maps.
But a result of using these apps/maps that we are not able to learn anything from the environment.
And we end up with poor spatial learning.
So the question is that how we can improve spatial navigation skills for the user.
To solve this problem, we have created a solution.
For example, we need to navigate from starting position (shown in the flag) to the
destination.
What are the ways we have?
We have two ways.
We can just follow the digital maps and follow the directional arrows to reach the destination.
Another way is to follow certain cues which we aware about in this environment.
In my and for this case, this building.
Let's say that I am aware of this building.
We can just follow this building as reference point to reach destination.
But due to several other buildings in-between such as tress, a tunnel that could block the
view of building 1.
We came to solution that why not we can use HoloLens or Augmented Reality to show a replica
of Building 1 as Building 3.
It is always oriented in the direction of Building 1.
In the case of Building 1 is blocked by Building 2, we can still see Building 1 in the replica
form as Building 2 using Augemented Reality.
We called this solution as Virtual Global Landmark.
To see if this solution is really effective and useful, we have performed an experiment.
In this experiment, we asked the participant to move around on four predefined paths using
Microsoft HoloLens in real-world environment.
We asked five participants to do this.
We have four randomized trials.
There were two different conditions which I will show in following slides.
And in the end, we asked the participants to answer a certain questionnaire and also do the map drawing.
This is condition 1, where a user is able to see directional arrows toward the destination,
very similar to a commercial app like Google Maps or bing Maps.
User is also able to see the map visible route as a reference.
But that is just a part of an experiment.
This is condition 2, where user does not see an arrow but always sees oriented Virtual
Global Landmark in the direction of a destination.
What results suggest about VGL
We asked the participants to answer NASA-TLX questionnaire at the end of each trial.
We compare between VGL and directional arrows.
We can see VGL always has less mental workload compare to the directional arrow which is in the favour.
We also looked at the independent component of NASA-TLX scores.
Which again suggest that VGL required less mental processing, less performance processing, and
less effort compared to directional arrows, which is again in the favour.
However, VGL required a little more physical effort and some frustration among participants.
We also looked at the learning effect by asking the participant to draw a map at the end of
each trial.
We counted the number of turns they walkthrough, and the number of landmarks they are able
to remember.
The number of turns is pretty much equal because our trials were short.
But the number of landmarks is significantly higher for VGL compare to directional arrows.
Which is a clear sign that the user has better learning about environment using VGL compare to the directional
arrows.
And the last, we also asked for their preference/feedback.
Of course, in terms of efficiency, the directional arrow better, but in terms of learning, they
think that VGL is better than the directional arrows.
In summary, we proposed a novel Virtual Global Landmark technique for Augmented Reality.
This technique, in this pilot study, very clearly shows that there is improvement in
spatial learning in participant used Virtual Global Landmark compared to traditional map
based directional arrow.
And interestingly, we do not find any additional mental workload in the case of VGL compare
to directional arrows.
We hope to continue this work in the future by adding physiological signals.
Thank you