Registration errors in beacon-based navigation guidance systems: Influences on path efficiency and user reliance

Emerging augmented reality displays provide high fidelity overlays onto real-world environments to enable navigation efficiency. The accuracy of these systems, however, is highly contingent on monitoring and registering user orientations and landmark locations. No data exist, however, regarding ranges at which registration error reliably influences user behavior and trust. The present experiments examined the influence of directional error in a simulated navigation guidance system on path efficiency and user trust. In three experiments, participants (N=90) navigated an urban desktop virtual environment with the assistance of an overlaid beacon depicting the direction and distance of a target landmark. Directional error was introduced into the beacon across trials, manipulated in 15° increments from 0° to 60° (Experiment 1), 5° increments from 0° to 20° (Experiment 2), and 1° increments from 6° to 10° (Experiment 3). Users show tolerance for up to approximately 8° angular direction error without significantly reducing path efficiency or user trust in system reliability. They also show reduced path efficiency emerging at lower angular errors (approximately 9°) relative to influences on perceived trust (approximately 16-20°). Results provide some basic heuristics for error tolerance, demonstrate important dissociations between the objective versus perceived impact of error in navigation displays, and contribute to theoretical positions regarding the optimization of global awareness and spatial knowledge acquisition.