Mental models in micro worlds: situated representations for the navigationally challenged

In a navigation context, a mental model is defined as an internal representation employed to encode, predict, and evaluate the consequences of perceived and expected changes in the environment that result from both active planning and decision making as well as from external influences. A model is proposed to capture how human navigators dynamically represent the world to accomplish goal directed navigation tasks. This situated representation scheme not only embodies multi-granular notions of location and orientation, but also the ability to learn from observations and active exploration. The computational framework for this situated representation is based on evidence theory.