Multimodal & adaptive navigational device generation

Abstract

When roaming in an unfamiliar environment, one may often require navigational assistance to reach a desired destination. When humans are consulted for wayfinding assistance, communication of spatial information and navigational instructions is usually delivered using sketched route maps and corresponding natural language instructions. The system designed and implemented in this project, aims to imitate these modalities of human navigational assistance by automatically generating schematic route maps complemented by natural language navigational instructions. A schematic map is a simplified and adapted version of a standard map which omits any irrelevant and unnecessary information from a planned route. Schematic route maps are equivalent to sketches drawn by humans to communicate spatial knowledge and navigational instructions. Advances in technology have given rise to the possibility of delivering automatic navigational assistance to mobile devices so as to assist users in unfamiliar environments in real-time. MANAGe automatically generates and delivers schematic route maps to different types of mobile devices. The use of adapted schematic route maps is adequate for communication of navigational instructions on mobile devices because of the limited display areas available on these devices.