Evaluation of a Mobile Application for Multimodal Land Navigation

Abstract

Among many of their countless dismounted roles, U.S. Air Force Battlefield Airmen must navigate in unfamiliar environments with many potential threats while performing their mission objectives. The effectiveness of navigating with a map and compass is compromised in reduced visibility conditions, such as in fog or during nighttime operations. Moreover, focusing on a map draws attention away from the immediate surroundings and reduces their ability to detect threats. To ameliorate this problem, we prototyped auditory and tactile navigation displays controlled only by a mobile phone using its built-in GPS and compass. The auditory and tactile displays direct users towards their destination with 3D audio and vibrotactile cues, respectively. We evaluated the navigation displays on a waypoint navigation task. Results suggest that auditory and tactile displays can guide users to their destination as effectively as a visual display (i.e., a GPS enabled map). Initial findings justify further development of multimodal navigation displays to increase the efficiency of Battlefield Airmen in land navigation tasks.