Towards automatically generating maps for wayfinding and orientation

Löwen Heinrich, Krukar Jakub, Schwering Angela

Abstract

People easily get lost when their navigation support systems malfunction. Previous research has focussed on enriching route descriptions with salient features, or developing methods to better visualize distant features on small screen devices in order to support spatial knowledge acquisition. In this paper we investigate the question, which features users prefer to have displayed on the map in order to orient in the environment and find their way along the route. We automatically generate maps by manipulating their information content for different routes and for different sections along the routes. We empirically investigate which of these maps are preferred. We found that there are larger differences in users' preferences between the sections within the same routes, than there are between conceptually similar sections between different routes. These results enable us to focus in future on specifying rules to select orientation information for conceptually different map sections and different routes, and, further on, opens the possibility to automatically generate maps for wayfinding and orientation.