TO THE NORTH COAST OF DEVON: COLLABORATIVE NAVIGATION WHILE EXPLORING UNFAMILIAR TERRAIN

• Main Authors: William J. Clancey, Pascal Lee, Charles S. Cockell, Stephen Braham, Mike Shafto
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Devon Island
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.154.6769; http://www.ic.arc.nasa.gov/m/pub/1169h/1169%20(Clancey).pdf

Navigation—knowing where one is and finding a safe route—is a fundamental aspect of all exploration. In unfamiliar terrain, one may use maps and instruments such as a compass or binoculars to assist, and people often collaborate in finding their way. This paper analyzes a group of people driving a humvee from a base camp to the north coast of Devon Island in the High Canadian Arctic. A complete audio recording and video during most stops allows a quantitative and semantic analysis of the conversations when the team stopped to take bearings and replan a route. Over a period of 2 hours, the humvee stopped 20 times, with an average duration of 3.15 min/pause and 3.85 min moving forward. The team failed to reach its goal due to difficult terrain causing mechanical problems. The analysis attempts to explain these facts by considering a variety of complicating factors, especially the navigation problem of relating maps and the world to locate the humvee and to plan a route. The analysis reveals patterns in topic structure and turn-taking, supporting the view that the collaboration was efficient, but the tools and information were