Including landmarks in routing instructions

This paper addresses the problem of incorporating cognitively salient landmarks in computer-generated navigation instructions. Based on a review of the existing literature in the domain of navigation with landmarks, the paper develops algorithms for generating routing instructions that include references to landmarks. The most basic algorithm uses a new weighting model to annotate simple routes with references to landmarks. A key novel feature of this algorithm is that it depends only on commonly available data and generic capabilities of existing webmapping environments. A suite of extensions are also proposed for improving the cognitive ergonomics of the basic landmark instructions. A case study, implemented within a national online routing system, demonstrates practicality of the approach. The paper then concludes by reviewing a range of further issues for future work.