Publication
Photomap: Using Spontaneously taken Images of Public Maps for Pedestrian Navigation Tasks on Mobile Devices.
Johannes Schöning; Keith Cheverst; Markus Löchtefeld; Antonio Krüger; Michael Rohs; Faisal Taher
In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Service. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI-2009), September 15-18, Bonn, Germany, ACM, 2009.
Abstract
In many mid- to large-sized cities public maps are ubiquitous. One
can also find a great number of maps in parks or near hiking trails.
Public maps help to facilitate orientation and provide special infor-
mation to not only tourists but also to locals who just want to look
up an unfamiliar place while on the go. These maps offer many
advantages compared to mobile maps from services like Google
Maps Mobile or Nokia Maps. They often show local landmarks
and sights that are not shown on standard digital maps. Often these
"YOU AR E HE R E"; (YAH) maps are adapted to a special use case,
e.g. a zoo map or a hiking map of a certain area. Being designed
for a fashioned purpose these maps are often aesthetically well de-
signed and their usage is therefore more pleasant. In this paper we
present a novel technique and application called PHOTOMAP that
uses images of "YOU AR E HE R E "; maps taken with a GPS-enhanced
mobile camera phone as background maps for on-the-fly navigation
tasks. We discuss different implementations of the main challenge,
namely helping the user to properly georeference the taken image
with suffcient accuracy to support pedestrian navigation tasks. We
present a study that discusses the suitability of various public maps
for this task and we evaluate if these georeferenced photos can be
used for navigation on GPS-enabled devices.