Pedestrian navigation using the sense of touch

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled user device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human–computer interaction has been visual, data, or images on a screen. Haptic feedback can be an important modality in Mobile Location-Based Services like – knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. In this paper we describe a methodology for the implementation of haptics in four distinct prototypes for pedestrian navigation. Prototypes are classified based on the user’s navigation guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Here haptics is used to convey location, orientation, and distance information to users using pedestrian navigation applications. Initial user trials have elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a ‘‘heads up’’ approach to mobile navigation. We also tested the spatial ability of the user to navigate using haptics and landmark images based navigation. This was followed by a test of memory recall about the area. Users were able to successfully navigate from a given origin to a Destination Point without the use of a visual interface like a map. Results show the users of haptic feedback for navigation prepared better maps (better memory recall) of the region as compared to the users of landmark images