From Turn-By-Turn Directions to Overview Information on the Way to Take

Abstract

This chapter examines the in-advance route directions that provide a coarse overview on the way to take. We discuss the required properties of these directions in order for them being useful and present some first methods to generate such instructions. These methods are based on the model for context-specific route directions as presented in Richter & Klippel (2005); cardinal directions, global landmarks, and environmental structure, like different districts, are used as elements in our approach to generate coarse directions that indicate major reorientation points along the way. The generation process results in an abstract relational specification of these directions that reflect conceptual elements of route information; the abstract specification may then be externalized in different modalities, for example verbally or graphically, to be presented to the user, which will be outlined.