http://www.jaewoo.org/GuidingLight/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance.html Guiding Light is a navigation assistance system that uses directions projected in the space itself to help people become better engaged in their environment and task domain. In particular, I focused on indoor navigation, a problem domain which is becoming increasingly important as the size and complexity of high-rise modern building complexes like hospitals, airports and shopping malls increases. The indoor environment is a particularly attractive research domain because there are better opportunities for controlled testing of different approaches to navigational assistance. <br/><br/>The handheld interface of Guiding Light uses a mini projector embedded in the device to project navigational information on the surrounding world. It works with a positioning device that uses an array of sensors to detect its location within a building as well as its bearing. Guiding Light uses an embedded tilt sensor to track the orientation of the phone. This allows us to present different information when the projector is held at different angles or different distances from the projected surface. The core metaphor in this interface is that of a flashlight, which reveals objects and information about the space it illuminates. This interface enables users to retrieve relevant spatial information by pointing the device at particular spaces the users are interested in – for example, directly on the path on which the users are walking.<br/><br/>The work has been done as partial of fulfillment of requirement for doctorate degree at MIT Media Lab.<br/>Project by Jaewoo Chung<br/>Supervisor Chris Schmandt iWeb 3.0.4 http://www.jaewoo.org/GuidingLight/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance/Entries/2012/1/20_Abstract_and_Background.html 5d247a3f-3945-478f-8efb-5653c4433b54 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:43:26 -0500 <a href="http://www.jaewoo.org/GuidingLight/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance/Entries/2012/1/20_Abstract_and_Background_files/_MG_6328.jpg"><img src="http://www.jaewoo.org/GuidingLight/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance/Media/object007_1.jpg" style="float:left; padding-right:10px; padding-bottom:10px; width:176px; height:132px;"/></a>People can easily become mindless in their decision-making and become disengaged from their surroundings when their actions depend on information and guidance from an assistive technology. Research has shown how automated navigation assistance systems lead users to be disengaged from the space through which they are traveling, resulting in poor recollection of the environment and poorer situational decision-making. This disengagement and mindlessness can potentially increase the risk of accidents and lower the quality of user experience. If we can help people become mindfully attentive to the environment and surroundings while carrying out navigation tasks using assistive technologies, We hypothesize that we will have better memory of the space, improved cognitive reconstruction of environment, and better understanding of the immediate situation, all of which will lead to better decision making and more efficient navigation. <br/><br/>In this work, we applied a new approach for analyzing the problem of navigation assistance for pedestrians, which considers both the physical and psychological constraints of users focused on navigation. I address the physical constraint that eyes should remain “on the street” by providing a new visual interface, named Guiding Light, that offers a mixed reality presentation of guidance information in the environment itself, instead of on a screen. We addressed the psychological constraint that minds should remain engaged with the environment by applying a framework ofbased on mindfulness and mindlessness theory (Langer 1989) in the design of the system. The theory explains how mindsets affect engagement levels and decision-making in daily activities.<br/><br/>In addition, we have developed an indoor positioning technology that provides relatively high accuracy localization and heading orientation of a user in indoor environments. The innovation not only involved developing a new sensor but also in a software system to collect fingerprint maps and tracking location with the fingerprint maps. This new technology opens up a new area in the field of developing magnetic field based positioning system to explore other possibilities of using a magnetic field based positioning system. <br/> http://www.jaewoo.org/GuidingLight/Indoor_Navigation_Assistance/Entries/2012/1/20_Magnetic_field_based_IPS_%28Indoor_positioning_system%29.html 4f78ecb5-8bef-4f78-9728-c1c019980193 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:31:48 -0500 We present an indoor positioning system that measures location using disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field caused by structural steel elements in a building. The presence of these large steel members warps the geomagnetic field in a way that is spatially varying but <br/>temporally stable. To localize, we measure the magnetic field using an array of e-compasses and compare the measurement with a previously obtained magnetic map. We <br/>demonstrate accuracy within 1 meter 88% of the time in experiments in two buildings and across multiple floors within the buildings. We discuss several constraint techniques that can maintain accuracy as the sample space increases