Abstract
Waypoint navigation is a critical task for dismounted soldiers, especially when navigating through novel environments with potential threats. In these dangerous environments, the soldiers should have their “eyes-up” and “ears-out” scanning the environment for critical signals. Current practices for dismounted soldiers include the use of a compass and map or small wearable computer in order to navigate. In this experiment, we compared several modalities and multiple combinations of these modalities in waypoint navigation performance. These modalities include two visual (an egocentric and a geocentric map), 3D spatialized audio, tactile, and the multimodal combinations of each. We also examined individual differences in sense of direction as a potential moderator of display usage. Results provide preliminary evidence that localized 3D audio and haptics navigation aids are an intuitive, efficient, and effective means of waypoint navigation, regardless of sense of direction.
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