Pragmatic framework of 3D visual navigation for mobile user

Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 Pragmatic Framework of 3D Visual Navigation for Mobile User Teddy Mantoro, Adamu A. Ibrahim Department of Computer Science, Kulliyyah (Faculty) of Information and Communication Technology International Islamic University Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Abstract—Mobile user navigation system explore and apply the emerging of 3D visualization system for visualizing and navigating conveniently in an environment. The important consideration in visualization navigation is the real time operation and the application device’s computational complexity capabilities. Currently more and new research are encourage on 3D application for mobile device that will give user truly and accurately virtual reality 3D environment in real time for user to find its path to navigate from one location to other location in an environment. Unfortunately, there is no commonly agreed way to determine the accurate 3D visualization and navigation system accompanying with the increasing activity of people among cities and countries around the world, the requirement for navigating people’s movement grows with unexpected speed. This paper provides a framework for the improved 3D visualization and navigation system. The framework will provide some contributions for consolidation of visualization navigation applications and techniques on mobile devices for user within an environment. Index Terms— Virtual reality, 3D-Visualization, PathFinding, User Navigation. I. INTRODUCTION There are always a lot of options when it comes to finding a location to reach to any place by a person who’s familiar with the environment, while an unfamiliar environment to any person is often difficult and time consuming to really get to a particular place. User navigation system provides new options for given viewpoints to present new views of a given design. However, with Mobile user navigation system it will helps identify new design descriptions, promoting new ideas with respect to design principles and making it easier for path finding within a given environment. The user navigation system most consideration is the 3D walk-spaces, which refer to 3D space environment that allow a user to freely walk around, as such it can be represented virtually and embedded on a device to allow user navigate with the help of the realtime connection between the 3D maps and the 3D walkspaces model based on landmark knowledge. The best part of having 3D display output is that user can see a clear landmark of certain location. Assume a user need to go to the placemark B from placemark A and the user must pass by a tower. From the 2D map, the user cannot distinguish which building it is clearly For that weakness, 3D map images are provided to help the user recognized the landmark or the sign easily. In a scenario where two mobile user running the application on their mobile device and they want to meet, the 3D map will shows the location of the user in the scene to navigate to the location of another user to meet on the same image plane [1]. The application could be used in any misinform places or massive places such as, amusement park, seaport, airports, shopping malls, market, schools and Hospitals. Users who walk to any place that there are using the implementation of the device will use the device, to be able to see the virtual reality of the environment to navigate around and locate their own information, and it will guide them depending on the existing generated data to where ever there going. The significant contemplation on user navigation system application for mobile device is the real time visualization navigation and the application device’s computational complexity capabilities. Presently there is a need for more 3D application for mobile device that give user precisely practical reality 3D environment in real time for a user to find its path to navigate from one location to other location in an environment. However, it is still crucial in favor of general established way to determine the accurate 3D mobile user visualization and navigation system. There are a lot of researches on 3D visualization navigation system in both indoor and outdoor environment using different technology. However, knowledge of 3D visualization and navigation system environment lie side by side with positioning/tracking system, the technique of the indoor tracking and positioning system have been developed and proven to be ideal. The indoor positioning systems are available in many approaches like infrared sensing, radio frequency, ultrasonic and scene capture. The concern rises in the flexibility, cost and accuracy of the available system, while the demand for location detection in indoor application is growing, unfortunately Muttitanon et al. shows that there is no commonly agreed way to determine accurate position in indoors positioning system [2]. Nevertheless, there is a technique that uses multiple samples from the same access point, taking high correlation into account, to enhance the accuracy of probabilistic WLAN indoor location determination [3]. Generally, there are two major categories of geographical positioning systems approach to determine a user’s location. One is based on the global positioning system (GPS); the other is based on the cellular network system. Although the approaches of these two major systems prove to be effective in outdoor environments with good weather, as a result, their performance decreases close to or under tall obstacles [4]. This paper describes a framework for consolidations of the techniques and applications of 3D visualization navigation system using mobile devices like PDA, The practical application of the framework will contribute to the building of a general architecture for 3D visual navigation techniques on mobile devices. It will also contribute in consolidating different approaches used for 3D visual navigation techniques to a more reliable and stable system. The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows; Section two discusses about related work, and section three provide the framework of the 3D virtual environment, and D-19 Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 section 4 discusses about the proposed architecture of the framework of this study, while section is 5 descried the implementation of the framework and section 6 is the discussion and section 7 is the conclusion of the work. II. RELATED WORK The effort involved in capturing the content of the 3D real environment accurately to embed it in to a device for real time navigation remain a major task in the field of mobile com puting. The most influential theory on navigation design in virtual environments has been argued as being insufficient to describe the complexity of spatial cognition in navigation in the communities of behavioral geography and spatial cognition [5]. However, in the mid-1990s, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), the pioneers of 3D computer graphics, began a project to bring interactive 3D graphics to the World Wide Web. The project took form as a scripting language that could be mixed in with traditional HTML WebPages. That marks the major breakthrough of this area. Different techniques and tools were used for 3D visual navigation. Early work on visual navigation started with using of 3D graphs. Herman et al. [6] survey on graph visualization and navigation techniques, as used in information visualization which has been adopted in their work. While, Raposo et al. [7] perform the early experiment which visualized 3D vector graphics, small VRML animations, and other multimedia on mobile data terminals so that it will be transmitted over GSM network. Brachtl et al. [8] established an approach on 3D modeling techniques in which a full 3D model is created to generate the illusion of movement in 3D space and Bladh et al. [9] evaluates the use of smooth animated transitions between directories in a three dimensional, tree maps visualization. Subsequently, Boon-Giin et al. [10] present spatial indoor location sensing information in 3D perception in mind thus, Mantoro et. al. [11] provides an approach for the 3D navigation system that utilizes user’s PDA with built-in GPS receiver. Owing to the different techniques and approaches, this paper desire to consolidate most of the schemes to yield up a new pragmatic framework, having in mind the contention, which state that a simple way to determine the applicability of graph visualization is to consider the following question: is there an inherent relation among the data elements to be visualized? If the answer to the question is “no”, then data elements are “unstructured” and the goal of the information visualization system might be to help discover relations among data through visual means. If, however, the answer to the question is “yes”, then the data can be represented by the nodes of a graph, with the edges representing the relations [6]. Though, Conventional approach on 3D modeling techniques to generate the illusion of movement in 3D space is challenging. Thus, a special browser for the given 3D modeling technology has to be used. The user can freely move in the 3D scene and choose an appropriate view of the scene, and thus get a good notion about the 3D environment investigated. When dealing with problems of navigation in such an environment, some kind of clue is given to the user as to where to go in the next step [8]. 3D visualization system for visualizing and navigating is a double- edged sword. Even though users take more shortcuts, they also make more severe navigational errors. It seems as though the promise of a more direct route to the target directory, which animation provides, somehow precludes users who navigate incorrectly from applying a successful recovery strategy [9]. Moreover; assignment of magnetic compass could provide dynamic orientation information of user current viewpoint in real-time [10]. With this contemplation, the author implement 3D navigation system which navigates user location using Global Positioning System (GPS) in campus environment that utilizes user’s Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with built-in GPS receiver. The approach was already put into operation in IIUM Gombak campus environment. The application provides 3D atmosphere so it will be easier for the user to recognize a most likely place to the real-world environment. The user could navigate using 3D model and at the same time can switch to the 2D maps environment [11]. However, since the system was based on the GPS receiver signal it will not be more reliable to indoor implementation because of the poor implementation of the GPS receive signal in the indoor environment. This whole aim of this paper is to emerge techniques of the 3D visualization system for visualizing and navigating conveniently in an environment observed from different implementations in order to be more strengthen for an ideal 3d environment III. 3D VISUAL NAVIGATION 3D environment (describe as a three-dimensional representation) is physical visual fields associated with demarcated regions around a moving observer into a varying degree. Normally, in a 3D environment it is not possible to visualize all the surfaces of all the objects simultaneously from one observer viewpoint [12]. Consequently, objects or part of objects that are not visible to the observer will be seen in a mobile device if the environment scene is embedded in his mobile device, as a result, It provide options that is suitable for making local decisions about moving around in a certain environment. Therefore, mobile device users can navigate around with the use of their mobile devices, which will be to rendering each structure that cannot be visualizes simultaneously by the user in to his device in a real-time. The visual navigation scenario can be described using for example Figure1. The path from point A through B was indicated as the scenario for a person from location A, who wishes to navigate to location B. this scenario, can be embedded on a mobile device to explain an ideal situation. There a lot of objects within location A and B, practically user will always finds the path that will take him easier to his destination, and might use his perceive options of paths that will link location A and location B. However, viewing from the surface of the embedded 3D environment scene in a mobile device will consider the best and easy path, for a user to navigate around the environment. D-20 Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 The available fundamental algorithms used to implement the techniques of the 3D visual navigation are mostly bearing model, they should also describe the 3D Visual systems in abstract to provide means to support the effective exploration of complex data exist in the focus. Fig. 1. Navigation from point A to point B in 3D environment The design and development is done through the use of the 3D map and developed using 3D application software, and embedded in to mobile device, while the web server dose the processing. However, by using the mobile device with built-in GPS, the user can access the map through 3D graphics map, so it will be easier to the user to recognize a most likely place to the real-world environment. With this capability, the user can recognize the surroundings easily. Besides that, the user may observe the other location with this system. Therefore, Real-time interactive 3D animation has the potential to support effective user interfaces by enabling virtual 3D workspaces. However, this potential requires development of viewpoint movement techniques that support rapid and controlled movement through workspaces. The key idea is to have the user indicate a point of interest (target) on a 3D object and use the distance to this target to move the viewpoint logarithmically, by moving the same relative percentage of distance to the target on every animation cycle [13]. It seems reasonable to claim that a 3D graphical entity that is shaded and viewed in perspective is more object-like than a 2D representation (usually a simple rectangle) and therefore the 3D solution better matches the central symbol [14]. IV. ARCHITECTURE OF 3D VISUAL NAVIGATION Based on the different tools and techniques studied, it is observed that the depth limit of each technique was specified by the developers; consequently result into different approaches of designing a 3D visual navigation system on mobile devices. Therefore, this paper tries to logically consolidate most of the techniques or parts of most the techniques to come up with a better approach. However, an interactive architecture is proposed. In general the system coprocessing interactive architecture is analyzed by taking into consideration three moving parts (see Figure 2). A. Visual Application Visual application in this framework is an application program that developers used with the aim of exploring data and information graphically as a means of gaining understanding and insight of an object. The choices of a particular program will depend on the scale of the algorithm. Fig. 2. Architecture 3D Visual Navigation B. 3D Workspace Processing The 3D workspace and 3D map are harmoniously related, in 3D workspace processing. Visualization of data related to the use of Location required the iterative animations; however, the animation provides interaction for the paths and objects on the mobile device which must show what is in front of the viewer accurately, the point of the visualization navigation, is to make it as accurately as possible for what you see on a mobile device to be the same with what you see in reality. There is onwards tradeoff between the visualization application and the 3D workspace processing (see Figure 2). The 3D processing is meant to maintain the object spaces and refresh the animation as the observer keeps moving, as a result, near-photorealistic virtual 3D walk-spaces in a realtime will be available on a mobile device to make it easier for the viewer to recognize the environment. However the path generated on the device represents the scene from an initial position to the final position. It will also performed search in sequence of nodes to find other path. Moreover the sequence of nodes and path orientation will also be determined. The iterative animation generates coordinates of points between nodes that define the path. The set of task that need to be computed in processing are the object their properties. C. User Interaction User interaction with the 3D workspace processing is a directional circle. The task iterative object queue refers to the processed animation which subsequent to acknowledgement, are then return to the user mobile device. As the user move or changes location the animation refreshes and the task is queue D-21 Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 in the 3D workspace processing and acknowledged and the user capture result. The circle continues. The architecture proposed make it easier for a user to determine the correct path, if a user enters a wrong location, it is easy to realize the error with animation by comparing the request with the real environment at real time. 3D graphics is not yet very fast in mobile devices, therefore, it can be customized by reducing the quality of the image, or by image decompression. More so, there is problem of GPS signal, sometimes is in-accurate due to the fact that the GPS signals is often blocked or reflected by different weather anomaly and shades. This is a common problem, which could greatly ease the accuracy. V. FRAMEWORK FOR 3D VISUAL NAVIGATION The framework proposes is an instructiveness of interaction of a combine operation working together as shown in Figure 3. Server processing section and the client GPS device signal transmit and received section, interacts with each other, thus failure of operation in one section will consequently affect the other the operation. Fig. 3. Implementation of 3D Visual Navigation The implementation goes on stage by stage and is demonstrated using a scenario as shown in Figure 3 where a user wants to go to point B from point A and want to be guided with a mobile device. The explanation of the scenario will be base on Figure 3. The user mobile device must be GSP enabled and embedded with the visual applications, then that will allow him to send a request for GPS signal at stage 1, the GPS signal will be received in the user mobile device at stage 2, the signal will be processed using the visual application and send to the connection server through internet connection using Wi-Fi at stage 3 and 4. The connection server will send the signal to the database server at stage 5, and the database server will sent the signal to the web server at stage 6, which will be processed and send to the user mobile device at stage 7, as user move the operation repeat again in real-time. The connection server, web application server, and database server are interacting together at the server processing section successionally, which means that while, the web application server present and processes the information of the real course of action captured; the connection server updates the database server with the real time operations, as such, the web application server keeps regenerating up-to-the-minute computation of the information receives from the connection server. The Client device, that is, mobile phone having GPS application; receives GPS signal and sent to the connection server via internet connection (either through Wi-Fi or GPRS or using SMS gateway server) to update the database server and instantaneously the web application server will processed the information received and send the feedback to the client (user mobile device). The Visual application is the program that is use for designing virtual reality 3D scene. The choices of an application should consider the computational complexities of the mobile device, the propose framework make it a list priority for an enduring application that will provide a quick real-time feedback from the client processing section to the connection server. Moreover, it should make a design more reliable and be able to determine a blueprint of a real 3D environment with high degree of accuracy. The 3D walkspaces map is another most important tool of consideration while designing the program that will be embedded on the mobile device, this is because it gives a user the 3D space environment background that allow him to freely study in those spaces, as such it can be can represented along side with the 2D map, so that user can trace better from the environment and will allow user to learn the structure of the graphical space and consequently give a better landmark knowledge. Nevertheless, understanding spatial environmental quality requires the application of Geographic Information System (GIS). With the analysis of GIS knowledge of boundary will make it easy to design the virtual environment. However, Boundary detection, which can described the region of order of important will be categorize and be given priority, that is, the area which is consider to be within the points of interest (POI) it’s necessary to consider region of significant and be giving foremost consideration while analyzing 3D. The 3D workspace map and boundary detection are part of the main component of the implementation of the framework. Visual application will use 3D workspace map and determine the boundary location. The real 3D environment should be compare with the output of the visual application. In the real environment, signal must be read by the visual application through the signal sources, depending on the technology use. The signal will be collected by the visual application. The signals will then be mapped with the spatial temporal database and studied. Mobile devices with some additional technology will make and enhanced the visual navigation better. Device like a digital magnetic compass, inertial sensors, and miniature video cameras for position and orientation tracking embedded on mobile device will provide an added advantage of location, time and context-aware visualization of information. Based on the implementation of the framework, some certain values where obtained over a given period of time within some certain points and it is represented in Figure 4. D-22 Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 The longitude, latitude, and distance where plotted over time for a mobile user who is navigating, As the user moves, the distance increases and the longitude value changes swiftly while the latitude changes where relatively small as shown in Figure 4. Fig. 4. Visualization information on time based The Navigation Path from the framework will be acknowledged by the iterative object captured by the visual application from the 3D real environment. The mobile device aim is to capture signal and be able to accurately get the 3D real environment scene, through the application program. As such, Navigation path will be display in real time which is acknowledged by iterative object encounter along the way. As the user keeps moving so also the circle continues. Eventually user position relative to the distance move over time is captured and presented in Figure 5. The values of the distance increases with time and this values are plotted and indicated a continuous increase pattern as shown in Figure 5. Fig. 5. Point to point changes over time The implementation based on distance over a given period of time within some certain points where represented in Figure 6. The longitude, latitude, and distance where plotted over time for a mobile user who is navigating, As the user moves, the distance increases and the longitude value changes slightly while the latitude changes where relatively small as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6. Visualization of information on distance based VI. DISCUSSION. The Architectural 3D Visual Navigation proposed is intended for an adhere 3D visual navigation system, that is practical consistent with the object’s intended role than can be done in a particular level line. There are a lot of different methods and techniques for 3D navigation system in a virtual environment; the concern rises in the flexibility, cost and accuracy of the available system. While the demand for 3D visual navigation system is growing, so far at hand many the techniques that are available were not generally based on a single approach. While some techniques are closely related to each others, some do not commonly agreed with each other. A number of the techniques were developed with a lot of flipside; while others are performing better, and others can do much better if some certain predicament will be tackle. However, this paper pursues the need in bridging important alongside techniques or part of most technique that will be merge together and to see the possible way to determine accurate 3D visualization navigation system, provided the structure will be simple and easy. The outcome of 3D visual navigation system on mobile device is to see 3D environment on mobile device (as shown in Figure 7) so that users will be able to navigate around the environment. Though this paper does not specify particular tools for the general techniques, but pointed out reasonable priorities to be taken at different stages of development. The advantages and applications of visualizing the real-time real world with 3D models are numerous, but the most important thing is to aid the establishment of a more reliable way in implementation. Therefore, Reliability, accessibility and availability of the proposed framework can be achieved through compensation of three elements; Accuracy of GPS D-23 Proceeding 3rd International Conference on ICT4M 2010 Coordinates, Credible Method of Updates, and the reasonably priced Cost of implementation. decisions (for their direction) as well as providing orientation movement during navigation (i.e. skilled way-finding) and will improved the increased spatial knowledge of the environment. Spatial knowledge can be described as three levels of information: landmark knowledge, procedural knowledge, and survey knowledge. This paper also discussed the possible user navigation using GPS based on time and distance in 3D map inside 3D dynamic walk-space image. 3D scene in a mobile device, will enables users to view their locations of services and real places in an intuitive and user-friendly way; moreover it can also be used for predicting and determining the distance and time between users or to certain landmark in an environment. REFERENCES Fig. 7. 3D virtual reality scene in mobile devices [1] The framework proposed serves to implement 3D visual navigation application on mobile devices, which will enable users to view the scene of interest and real places in a perceptive and accessible way, the visualization application provide the implementation of the design based on user interaction in real-time manner, however the whole architecture presented the structure of controlled resources to be processed in 3D workspace processing and the core of this architecture is animation, navigation and maintenance objects. The outcome of the framework will benefit the user’s location and visualized location context-based information, which can be used for predicting and determining distance and time between users to certain landmarks (static target) or dynamic target (navigation) in a pervasive computing environment. VII. CONCLUSION. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] This paper describes pragmatic architecture of 3D visual navigation for mobile user, in order to provide certain priorities to be observe for 3D visual navigation system techniques. Emphases to the consolidation of different parts of techniques to formed more consistency, ease of understanding and ease of use technique is the main contribution of this paper. The heart of the architecture 3D visual navigation is the coprocessing interactive architecture. The architecture describes the structure of controlled resources to be processed in 3D workspace processing and to visualize using visualization application based on user interaction in real-time manner The paper proposed framework can be achieved through compensation of three elements. Which are accuracy of GPS coordinates, credible method of updates, and affordable cost. 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