Previous research in pedestrian route guidance is mainly focused on presenting a route map on the screen of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The number of Internet-capable mobile phones is increasing rapidly. They usually have a small display, which cannot show usable maps. This paper presents an alternative way to guide a pedestrian with a mobile phone. An experiment was conducted in order to investigate how simple turn-by-turn route guidance for WAP phone could be provided. The initial results show that the turn-by-turn guidance is easy to learn and an effective way to navigate, especially in city areas. In order to provide efficient route guidance for a pedestrian, route calculation should be optimized for pedestrian needs. Future research should include the use of landmarks in the pedestrian route guidance.
Abstract