2 research outputs found
Hand-worn Haptic Interface for Drone Teleoperation
Drone teleoperation is usually accomplished using remote radio controllers,
devices that can be hard to master for inexperienced users. Moreover, the
limited amount of information fed back to the user about the robot's state,
often limited to vision, can represent a bottleneck for operation in several
conditions. In this work, we present a wearable interface for drone
teleoperation and its evaluation through a user study. The two main features of
the proposed system are a data glove to allow the user to control the drone
trajectory by hand motion and a haptic system used to augment their awareness
of the environment surrounding the robot. This interface can be employed for
the operation of robotic systems in line of sight (LoS) by inexperienced
operators and allows them to safely perform tasks common in inspection and
search-and-rescue missions such as approaching walls and crossing narrow
passages with limited visibility conditions. In addition to the design and
implementation of the wearable interface, we performed a systematic study to
assess the effectiveness of the system through three user studies (n = 36) to
evaluate the users' learning path and their ability to perform tasks with
limited visibility. We validated our ideas in both a simulated and a real-world
environment. Our results demonstrate that the proposed system can improve
teleoperation performance in different cases compared to standard remote
controllers, making it a viable alternative to standard Human-Robot Interfaces.Comment: Accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA) 202