A Planning Pipeline for Large Multi-Agent Missions

In complex multi-agent applications, human operators are often tasked with planning and managing large heterogeneous teams of humans and autonomous vehicles. Although the use of these autonomous vehicles broadens the scope of meaningful applications, many of their systems remain unintuitive and difficult to master for human operators whose expertise lies in the application domain and not at the platform level. Current research focuses on the development of individual capabilities necessary to plan multi-agent missions of this scope, placing little emphasis on the integration of these components in to a full pipeline. The work presented in this paper presents a complete and user-agnostic planning pipeline for large multiagent missions known as the HOLII GRAILLE. The system takes a holistic approach to mission planning by integrating capabilities in human machine interaction, flight path generation, and validation and verification. Components modules of the pipeline are explored on an individual level, as well as their integration into a whole system. Lastly, implications for future mission planning are discussed

Exploring Alternative Control Modalities for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as an aircraft without a human pilot on board. They are currently utilized primarily in the defense and security sectors but are moving towards the general market in surprisingly powerful and inexpensive forms. While drones are presently restricted to non-commercial recreational use in the USA, it is expected that they will soon be widely adopted for both commercial and consumer use. Potentially, UAVs can revolutionize various business sectors including private security, agricultural practices, product transport and maybe even aerial advertising. Business Insider foresees that 12% of the expected $98 billion cumulative global spending on aerial drones through the following decade will be for business purposes.[28] At the moment, most drones are controlled by some sort of classic joystick or multitouch remote controller. While drone manufactures have improved the overall controllability of their products, most drones shipped today are still quite challenging for inexperienced users to pilot. In order to help mitigate the controllability challenges and flatten the learning curve, gesture controls can be utilized to improve piloting UAVs. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an improved and more intuitive method of flying UAVs by supporting the use of hand gestures, and other non-traditional control modalities. The goal was to employ and test an end-to-end UAV system that provides an easy-to-use control interface for novice drone users. The expectation was that by implementing gesture-based navigation, the novice user will have an overall enjoyable and safe experience quickly learning how to navigate a drone with ease, and avoid losing or damaging the vehicle while they are on the initial learning curve. During the course of this study we have learned that while this approach does offer lots of promise, there are a number of technical challenges that make this problem much more challenging than anticipated. This thesis details our approach to the problem, analyzes the user data we collected, and summarizes the lessons learned

A Comprehensive Matrix of Unmanned Aerial Systems Requirements for Potential Applications within a Department of Transportation

©ASCE 2014DOI: 10.1061/9780784413517.099The continuous improvement in the function and performance of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) promotes the need for specific research to integrate this leading edge technology in to various applications across Departments of Transportation (DOTs). DOTs of several states have started looking into using UAS technology for different purposes from tracking highway construction projects and performing structure inventories to road maintenance, monitoring roadside environmental conditions, as well as many other traffic management or safety issues, albeit individually focusing on specific us age scenarios. This study investigates various divisions and offices within a Department of Transportation to determine the operational requirements for UAS usage in specific divisions which have the potential to implement this technology to aid and supplement their daily operations. Through a series of interviews with subject matter experts at the management and operational levels, a matrix of user requirements for tasks that have the potential to use UAS is developed. This matrix is mapped to a UAS technical matrix that embeds the technological and technical requirements for development of a potential UAS. These matrices can be used by other DOTs for defining the design specifications for UAS that can fulfill their construction related operational requirements

Envisioning social drones in education

Education is one of the major application fields in social Human-Robot Interaction. Several forms of social robots have been explored to engage and assist students in the classroom environment, from full-bodied humanoid robots to tabletop robot companions, but flying robots have been left unexplored in this context. In this paper, we present seven online remote workshops conducted with 20 participants to investigate the application area of Education in the Human-Drone Interaction domain; particularly focusing on what roles a social drone could fulfill in a classroom, how it would interact with students, teachers and its environment, what it could look like, and what would specifically differ from other types of social robots used in education. In the workshops we used online collaboration tools, supported by a sketch artist, to help envision a social drone in a classroom. The results revealed several design implications for the roles and capabilities of a social drone, in addition to promising research directions for the development and design in the novel area of drones in education

Exploring 3d gesture metaphors for interaction with unmanned aerial vehicles

We present a study exploring upper body 3D spatial interaction metaphors for control and communication with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) such as the Parrot AR Drone. We discuss the design and implementation of five interaction techniques using the Microsoft Kinect, based on metaphors inspired by UAVs, to support a variety of flying operations a UAV can perform. Techniques include a first-person interaction metaphor where a user takes a pose like a winged aircraft, a game controller metaphor, where a user\u27s hands mimic the control movements of console joysticks, proxy manipulation, where the user imagines manipulating the UAV as if it were in their grasp, and a pointing metaphor in which the user assumes the identity of a monarch and commands the UAV as such. We examine qualitative metrics such as perceived intuition, usability and satisfaction, among others. Our results indicate that novice users appreciate certain 3D spatial techniques over the smartphone application bundled with the AR Drone. We also discuss the trade-offs in the technique design metrics based on results from our study. Copyright © 2013 ACM

Estudio de control de posición de un dron DJI Tello con los movimientos y gestos de la mano

La evolución tecnológica de los robots ha ido creciendo constantemente durante los últimos años no solo en industrias de producción sino también en la vida social de las personas. Los denominados robots sociales o robots autónomos están ocupando más tareas en la vida diaria de las personas con el pasar de los años. Estos robots están siendo diseñados para servirnos y así tener un estilo de vida más sencillo. Por otro lado, los robots voladores (drones) han sido utilizados con más frecuencia en distintas áreas como la topografía, control fiscal, entre otros. Sin embargo, recientes aplicaciones se están orientando a un uso cotidiano de los drones. Este objetivo se logrará buscando formas de interacción más fluida con los robots, con el menor uso de dispositivos adicionales. Actualmente los drones son controlados usando un control remoto o joystick lo cual resulta adecuado cuando este se encuentra a una distancia superior a los dos metros. Sin embargo, cuando el dron se encuentra a una distancia menor a los dos metros de las personas se vuelve cada vez más redundante el uso de un joystick para controlar su posición. Diversos estudios demuestran que las personas se muestran más cómodas y seguras controlando al dron utilizando los movimientos y gestos de una mano cuando estos se encuentran cerca. El presente trabajo de investigación hace una revisión de la literatura basada en el procesamiento de imágenes para reconocimiento de objetos (una mano) y los distintos desarrollos o aplicaciones implementados en drones sociales. La combinación de estas investigaciones busca generar una nueva capacidad de interacción que permita controlar a los drones utilizando los movimientos y gestos de una mano.Trabajo de investigació