3DVN: A Mixed Reality Platform for Mobile Navigation Assistance

Paper in proceeding, 2007

We present 3DVN, a Mixed Reality platform for navigation assistance in indoor environments. Built on top of a PC-based wearable computer running the Windows operating system, the platform provides a multimodal user interface to navigate existing physical buildings, including wireless networking, data glove gestural input, voice communication, head-mounted display, and a 3DOF head tracker. Local positioning is performed using a software-only WLAN-based engine to accurately pinpoint the mobile device in three dimensions. We use this system as a platform for a simple theoretical framework for classifying interaction for mobile navigation assistance. Informal qualitative evaluation of our system seems to conform to predictions derived from our framework and shows the need for a rich set of interaction components for successful mobile navigation.