CoNaviMap: Collective Navigation in Wilderness Search and Rescue Using Collaborative 3D Sketch Mapping
Published in Workshop on Scaling Distributed Collaboration in Mixed Reality – The Blended Realities Collective at ACM CHI 2025, 2025
Wilderness Search and Rescue (WSAR) is a complex and time-sensitive operation that requires efficient spatial communication and navigation. Existing mapping technologies, including paper and digital maps, play a critical role in WSAR but face limitations in collaborative and real-time updates. This position paper introduces CoNaviMap, a collaborative 3D sketch mapping tool leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance the navigation performance of WSAR. By nabling distributed teams—such as search teams and commanders—to share and modify a sketch map intuitively, CoNaviMap integrates the benefits of digital maps (editable, transferable, collaborative) and sketch maps (intuitive, familiar, instant). The research raises key research questions about the performance of collaborative 3D sketch mapping in WSAR and aims to inform the future development of interactive sketch mapping technologies for WSAR.
Recommended citation: Tianyi Xiao*, Sailin Zhong, Peter Kiefer, Phoebe Toups Dugas, Martin Raubal. (2025). CoNaviMap: Collective Navigation in Wilderness Search and Rescue Using Collaborative 3D Sketch Mapping. Workshop on Scaling Distributed Collaboration in Mixed Reality - The Blended Realities Collective at ACM CHI 2025.
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