Wayfinding in Scene Space

Many environments in which humans wayfind can be conveniently abstracted as networks or graphs: structures of nodes that are interconnected by edges. Examples include the street network of a city, the lines operated by some public transport provider, and paths in a park. I will refer to such environments as network space. But there are other environments that do not exhibit a clear network structure, among them: public greens, university campuses, shopping malls, and train stations. I refer to these as scene space because what they have in common is a collection of "open spaces" or "scenes," such as halls, areas, and squares. Wayfinding in public transport takes place on traffic networks. These consist of lines that are interconnected at nodes, ranging in size from small stops to large stations. The network is essential to wayfinding because it is the basis for routing decisions (today, such routing is much simplified by the presence of electronical timetables in th...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: KI
• Authors: Urs-Jakob Rüetschi
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, KI 2008, Network Space, Public Transport, Scene Space