Training Wayfinding: Natural Movement in Mixed Reality

摘要

This report describes an experiment that investigated a prototype mixed reality (MR) system, utilizing the Battlefield Augmented Reality System (BARS), for training wayfinding. BARS is a mobile augmented reality system that uses a head mounted display (HMD) and a wireless system that tracks the users' head position and orientation. In this application a graphic representation of an office space was used as a virtual environment (VE), through which users walked using natural movement. Sixty participants in three rehearsal conditions - drawing the route on a map, actual physical space, and MR - were trained to traverse a path through a complex area as quickly and accurately as possible. Transfer of training measures included route knowledge (time to complete the route and the number of errors committed) and survey knowledge (the ability to orient oneself to the environment and identify the location of the beginning and end of the route). MR participants performed as well as those who rehearsed by drawing the route on a map, in both route and survey knowledge, but not as well as those who rehearsed in the actual space, without reporting symptoms of simulator sickness, common to work in VE. The addition of natural movement to a VE may enhance training through proprioceptive feedback.