Simulation of Spatial Memory for Human Navigation Based on Visual Attention in Floorplan Review

摘要

Human navigation simulation is critical to many civil engineering tasks and is of central interest to the simulation community. Most human navigation simulation approaches focus on the classic psychology evidence, or assumptions that still need further proofs. The overly simplified and generalized assumption of navigation behaviors does not highlight the need of capturing individual differences in spatial cognition and navigation decision-making, or the impacts of diverse ways of spatial information display. This study proposes the visual attention patterns in floorplan review to be a stronger predictor of human navigation behaviors. To set the theoretical foundation, a Virtual Reality (VR) experiment was performed to test if visual attention patterns during spatial information review can predict the quality of spatial memory, and how the relationship is affected by the diverse ways of information display, including 2D, 3D and VR. The results set a basis for future prediction model developments.