Research on Generating an Indoor Landmark Salience Model for Self-Location and Spatial Orientation from Eye-Tracking Data

Abstract

Landmarks play an essential role in wayfinding and are closely related to cognitive processes. Eye-tracking data contain massive amounts of information that can be applied to discover the cognitive behaviors during wayfinding; however, little attention has been paid to applying such data to calculating landmark salience models. This study proposes a method for constructing an indoor landmark salience model based on eye-tracking data. First, eye-tracking data are taken to calculate landmark salience for self-location and spatial orientation tasks through partial least squares regression (PLSR). Then, indoor landmark salience attractiveness (visual, semantic and structural) is selected and trained by landmark salience based on the eye-tracking data. Lastly, the indoor landmark salience model is generated by landmark salience attractiveness. Recruiting 32 participants, we designed a laboratory eye-tracking experiment to construct and test the model. Finding 1 proves that our eye-tracking data-based modelling method is more accurate than current weighting methods. Finding 2 shows that significant differences in landmark salience occur between two tasks; thus, it is necessary to generate a landmark salience model for different tasks. Our results can contribute to providing indoor maps for different tasks.