Field evaluation of a wearable multimodal soldier navigation system

Challenging environments pose difficulties for terrain navigation, and therefore wearable and multimodal navigation systems have been proposed to overcome these difficulties. Few such navigation systems, however, have been evaluated in field conditions. We evaluated how a multimodal system can aid in navigating in a forest in the context of a military exercise. The system included a head-mounted display, headphones, and a tactile vibrating vest. Visual, auditory, and tactile modalities were tested and evaluated using unimodal, bimodal, and trimodal conditions. Questionnaires, interviews and observations were used to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each modality and their multimodal use. The guidance was considered easy to interpret and helpful in navigation. Simplicity of the displayed information was required, which was partially conflicting with the request for having both distance and directional information available.