Nature Trailer- Physically Navigate Stories in the Wild

Nature Trailer is an entertainment and navigation platform that attempts to facilitate recreational exploration. Designed for a hiker wandering through a remote place, Nature Trailer virtually embeds context-aware stories throughout a landscape and provides clues of their locations. In this scenario a user is mobile, on foot, outdoors, and with little access to network infrastructure. The wireless platform we describe in this paper consists of sensors, movie scenes, a context aware media browser and a navigation tool, all supported on an iPAQ handheld computer. We discuss our motivations behind combining a time-based decisionmaking tool that supports individual, on-foot navigation of place with delivery of contextually aware "just in time" stories that further inform about the remote place. We explain the iterative methodology used by the researchers, including the design, analysis and evaluation of a series of multiple small-scale field tests and the design and utilization of real-time sensing as contextual input. We conclude with a report on the current state of the project and a projection of further uses for the logged user interaction and context data in iterating the Nature Trailer design.