Authors:
Andrés-Marcelo Calle-Bustos
1
;
Jaime Juan
1
;
Francisco Abad
1
;
Paulo Dias
2
;
Magdalena Méndez-López
3
and
M.-Carmen Juan
1
Affiliations:
1
Instituto Universitario de Automática e Informática Industrial, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
;
2
Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, University of Aveiro, Portugal
;
3
Departamento de Psicología y Sociología, IIS Aragón, Universidad de Zaragoza, 44003 Teruel, Spain
Keyword(s):
Augmented Reality, Visual Stimuli, Auditory Stimuli, Indoor Guidance.
Abstract:
Indoor navigation systems are not widely used due to the lack of effective indoor tracking technology. Augmented Reality (AR) is a natural medium for presenting information in indoor navigation tools. However, augmenting the environment with visual stimuli may not always be the most appropriate method to guide users, e.g., when they are performing some other visual task or they suffer from visual impairments. This paper presents an AR app to support visual and auditory stimuli that we have developed for indoor guidance. A study (N=20) confirms that the participants reached the target when using two types of stimuli, visual and auditory. The AR visual stimuli outperformed the auditory stimuli in terms of time and overall distance travelled. However, the auditory stimuli forced the participants to pay more attention, and this resulted in better memorization of the route. These performance outcomes were independent of gender and age. Therefore, in addition to being easy to use, auditory
stimuli promote route retention and show potential in situations in which vision cannot be used as the primary sensory channel or when spatial memory retention is important. We also found that perceived physical and mental efforts affect the subjective perception about the AR guidance app.
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