An agent-based approach to adaptive navigational support within 3D-environments

This paper investigates mechanisms and approaches to assisting user navigation and exploration within 3-dimensional worlds. Specifically it advocates the deployment of an agent-based approach to dynamic system assistance and intervention. A performance equation is presented in a basic and an extended version, which is used to activate system interventions and to evaluate user performances online and offline. The measure is derived via a light-weight computationally inexpensive masking approach. We describe some navigation experiments and the results of navigational intervention via the damping of the sensitivity of the navigational keys. Interestingly the navigational assistance does not yield improvements in the subjects' navigational abilities.