Sunday 19 September 2010

Providing freedom of exploration with mobile navigation

PhD researcher Simon Robinson from Swansea University, UK and his colleagues have developed an interesting alternative solution to turn-by-turn navigation on mobile devices, enabling better exploration of cities. This comes in the form of a novel app that provides the user feedback on the general direction to take to reach a geographical target while at the same time leaving the precise route open to choice. The phone simply vibrates when it is pointing towards the target.

The prototype system was tested in a study with 24 volunteers, who were asked to traverse to a destination which was 1.5 kilometres away. Using the system, all reached the goal.

Read more about this work here.

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