CEWay will tell you the right way to go
[ UniNews Vol. 14, No. 14
8 - 22 August 2005 ]
A new breed of navigation system tuned to how the human brain thinks is being developed by researchers at the University of Melbourne.
Research to develop the new navigation system – aimed at helping people find their way in unfamiliar surroundings – recently won Australian Research Council Linkage funding worth $205,000 over four years.
Called Cognitively Ergonomic Wayfinding Directions for Location-Based Services (CEWay), the system is being developed by a University team in collaboration with Sensis, Telstra Research Laboratories, and Webraska.
Research into CEWay is based in Melbourne’s departments of Geomatics and Computer Science and Software Engineering.
Lead researcher Dr Stephan Winter (Geomatics) sees the new system being a major step forward from current navigation systems such as car navigation systems or tourist guides because it will require less precise positioning information.
“The main benefit that CEWay will hold over current systems is that it will be designed around how we think,” he says. “It’s based on landmarks. For example, rather than being told to ‘go straight for 450m then turn left’, the new technology is more likely to tell you to ‘head towards the church and turn left after passing the hospital’.”
He says research has shown that humans tend to rely on landmarks to communicate and memorise routes so it makes sense that a navigational system should also communicate in this way, but it is not quite as simple to develop.
“Currently there exists no precise specification for the concept of a ‘landmark’. This is one of the things that CEWay will develop. The new system will characterise specific notable features of buildings, rivers and roads that would make useful points of reference when giving directions.”
CEWay will also produce a model for selecting the landmarks for a particular route and the direction the person is travelling in.
Another benefit that CEWay would hold over current systems is that it will work with relatively vague information concerning the person’s position, for example, based on the cell of their mobile phone.
The various current positioning methods, including GPS, are frequently not as precise as required for current navigation systems. CEWay will work with low-quality information by using qualitative or imprecise location references, such as ‘on campus’ or ‘after passing the hospital’. Again, this feature is closer to how we think and communicate.
“CEWay will be easier to use, will require less brain power and will improve the success and safety of mobile location-based services,” Dr Winter says.
“We expect this new technology to lay the foundations for attractive and sustainable mobile services in Australia, which will in turn enhance the digital telecommunications infrastructure.
“It also provides a wide range of opportunities for developing different products from tourist information guides to entertainment devices and is therefore marketable worldwide.”
The researchers expect the finished product to be available in three years and hope to trial a system during Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games next year.
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