Tactile land navigation for dismounted soldiers

In land navigation by dismounted soldiers, using a visual display obstructs the use of the soldier’s eyes and hands for other tasks. This issue can be resolved by presenting navigation information on a tactile waist belt, which proved to be effective in previous studies. This paper presents an experiment focused on navigation, target detection and situational awareness (SA) in a multitask environment. The performance and subjective ratings for a tactile and two visual navigation systems were compared. 24 Soldiers navigated three densely forested routes at night, with live and silhouette targets along the route. The soldiers found the tactile display easy to use and reached high performance levels: more targets were detected and higher navigation speeds were reached on part of the route. The soldiers rated the tactile system high, and especially appreciated its hands-free and eyes-free aspect. However, the soldiers also indicated that the tactile system was less suited to build up global situational awareness, compared to a map display.