What distinguishes an elite orienteer from a recreational runner? In a new research project at Chalmers University of Technology, orienteering is used as a testbed to study spatial intelligence – how people and machines interpret spatial information, make decisions, and navigate complex environments.
“Geospatial information is fundamental to how we perceive, understand, and act in the world. It goes far beyond maps as static artifacts, it shapes how we reason about space, make decisions under uncertainty, and navigate complex environments,” says Marco L. Della Vedova, associate professor at the divison of Vehicle Engineering and Autonomous Systems.
Marco L. Della Vedova’s research background is in computer engineering and artificial intelligence, but his work is strongly interdisciplinary. The common thread is the interaction between humans, technology, and space - how both humans and machines perceive maps, geographic data, and natural environments, and how this understanding is translated into action.
With funding from the Swedish Research Council for Sport Science (Centrum för idrottsforskning, CIF), Marco is now studying orienteering in the project Spatial Intelligence and Performance in Orienteering. The sport combines physical exertion with continuous cognitive demands: map reading, terrain interpretation, and rapid route-choice decisions, often under time pressure.
"An ideal testbed"
“Orienteering is an ideal testbed for studying spatial intelligence in action. It tightly couples physical effort with continuous decision-making based on map reading and terrain interpretation. This makes the sport particularly well suited for studying how different cognitive strategies emerge and how experts fundamentally differ from novices,” he says.
The aim of the project is to understand what happens at a deeper cognitive level among elite orienteers: how they read the map, what information they prioritize or ignore, when they simplify, and how they recover from mistakes.
“These mechanisms are at the core of spatial intelligence, and we still have a surprisingly limited understanding of them,” says Marco Della Vedova.
The ambition is that the results will contribute both to fundamental research in AI and to practical applications within orienteering, such as more targeted training methods and new tools for performance analysis and training.
Orienteering meets research at new conference
The connection between research and orienteering will be further strengthened in the summer of 2026, when Chalmers organizes O-Conference, the first international conference on orienteering in scientific research and higher education. The conference will be held in conjunction with O-Ringen in Gothenburg.
By bringing together researchers from multiple disciplines, the conference aims to foster new collaborations and highlight orienteering both as a research object and as a pedagogical resource in higher education.
“O-Ringen in Gothenburg is a unique opportunity to kick-start a community of researchers and educators who use orienteering as a lens for science and education - orienteering-inspired science, as I like to call it. For me, it is a perfect chance to bring together international perspectives and deepen our understanding of how people interact with spatial information in real-world, demanding environments,” says Marco Della Vedova.
In addition to the research project Spatial Intelligence and Performance in Orienteering, orienteering is embedded at Chalmers in several ways. In education, the TRACKS course Digitalization in Sports hosts student projects focused on orienteering. As a Swedish National Sports University (RIU), Chalmers also offers individually adapted study plans for around 20 elite orienteers, both Swedish and international.
About O-Conference 2026
O-Conference 2026 is the first international conference dedicated to orienteering in scientific research and higher education. It will take place on 18–19 July 2026 in Gothenburg, in direct connection with O-Ringen.
The conference brings together researchers, educators, practitioners, and orienteering enthusiasts from around the world to explore how orienteering is a source of inspiration in areas such as navigation, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, geospatial science, education, and sport science.
The goal is to create a truly interdisciplinary forum for exchanging ideas, methods, and research results. Participants are also encouraged to combine scientific discussions with practical experience in the terrain during O-Ringen.
Contact
- Associate Professor, Vehicle Engineering and Autonomous Systems, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences