Having a calming voice like that of John Cleese or Ozzy Osbourne shout out directions to supplement the visuals on your GPS navigation device is an effective way to make sure that you don’t miss your turn. Relying on visual navigation is a big distraction for cyclists too, dangerously diverting focus away from the road ahead. To help overcome such issues, a research team in the Netherlands has reported promising results from an audio-only navigation system that uses an Android smartphone connected to a pair of headphones to help guide users to a target location with music that’s artificially shifted to the left or right to indicate direction.

Headphone-based audio navigation aids have already been the subject of some research – such as helping visually impaired folks to get around, exploring virtual environments, improving safety for car drivers, airplane navigation, and in situations where looking at screens is not possible (such as when wearing helmets or pressure suits).

In a country where folks are said to travel twice as far by bike than on foot, four User System Interaction trainees from Eindhoven University of Technology have developed a tuneful variation of a GPS navigation system to help cyclists get around without having to keep diverting attention from the road ahead.

Found on Gizmag