Where is the Landmark? Eye Tracking Studies in Large-Scale Indoor Environments

Several studies show that the use of landmarks is crucial for pedestrian navigations systems. Furthermore, there are well-defined landmark features like its visual salience. However, the assessment and the selection of landmarks especially in large scale indoor environments is rarely examined. We conducted a user study in the university of Regensburg and assessed the visual attraction of objects with an eye tracker. Our findings show that functional landmarks like doors and stairs are most likely to be looked at and named as a landmark. Moreover, we could prove that measuring visual salience only is not sufficient to identify landmarks with regard to the use in a pedestrian navigation system.