Improving Navigation Efficiency with Artificial Force Field

Evolution of 3D graphics acceleration hardware has enabled novel user interface designs for many new applications running on a regular desktop personal computer. However, navigating in an architectural environment remains difficult for a novice user because of the limited view and low-level control that the current interface provides. In this paper, we propose to use an artificial force field to help a user walkthrough an architectural environment efficiently and naturally. For a given environment, a repulsive force field is computed off-line in accordance with the obstacles in the environment. An artificial force generated from this field is applied to the user viewpoint in order to reduce the chance of getting stuck by the obstacles. This force is dynamically modified at run time according to user behaviors such that the generated motions are compliant with user intention. Experiments show that artificial force field is an effective method for improving navigation efficiency. In addition, we have also integrated the force field method with a path planner proposed in our previous work. We have found that the force field method is complementary to the path-planning method, and the merits of both methods can be combined to further improve navigation efficiency.