Indoor Navigation Systems via Augmented Reality and Reality Capture: From Exocentric to Egocentric Spatial Perspective

Conventional spatial information is mainly presented as exocentric perspectives; that is, information is displayed in front of a user, analogous to third person viewpoint. Exocentric perspective presents the location of one object relative to the location of other objects. The recent advancements in mixed reality have expanded the border of spatial information communication by condensing intuitive visualization, localization, and interaction methods into portable devices. The implementation of optical see through (OST) head mounted displays (HMD) and reality capture technologies enable spatial models (e.g., point cloud) to be projected directly at a 1:1 scale on top of the real building, creating an illusion of “seeing through walls.” This will give the user an egocentric reference of spatial information, which presents location information relative to the user’s own body, and from which the user can plan paths to the desired destination without ingestion and conversion. However, the uncertainties remain in how these applications can improve the efficiency of spatial awareness especially when one has access to both new and conventional spatial perspectives. This paper develops an augmented reality-based navigation system to improve spatial awareness via real-time reality capture and geometric alignment technologies for providing both exocentric and egocentric perspectives. Then a human-subject experiment was performed in a real two-story building at the University of Florida. Corresponding spatial information was presented with pre-scanned point cloud and mesh models using a virtual scene built with Unity game engine and then visualized with a HoloLens 2 HMD in both perspectives. The findings confirmed that the proposed egocentric visualization of building helped achieve better wayfinding performance, and advantages in cognitive load and situational awareness.