AeroHaptix: A Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback System for Enhancing Collision Avoidance in UAV Teleoperation

TL;DR

Problem: UAV teleoperation suffers from limited obstacle perception and the drawbacks of force-feedback joysticks that couple input and output. Approach: AeroHaptix is a wearable vibrotactile system with 32 actuators and a perceptually optimized layout, paired with MultiCBF for multi-directional collision feedback. Contributions: hardware with low latency, a neural-network-based actuator layout optimization, and MultiCBF enabling multi-point haptic cues, demonstrated to reduce collisions and input disagreement while improving situational awareness and maintaining comparable workload. Impact: enables safer, more intuitive multi-obstacle collision avoidance for UAV teleoperation in cluttered environments.

Abstract

Haptic feedback enhances collision avoidance by providing directional obstacle information to operators during unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) teleoperation. However, such feedback is often rendered via haptic joysticks, which are unfamiliar to UAV operators and limited to single-direction force feedback. Additionally, the direct coupling between the input device and the feedback method diminishes operators' sense of control and induces oscillatory movements. To overcome these limitations, we propose AeroHaptix, a wearable haptic feedback system that uses spatial vibrations to simultaneously communicate multiple obstacle directions to operators, without interfering with their input control. The layout of vibrotactile actuators was optimized via a perceptual study to eliminate perceptual biases and achieve uniform spatial coverage. A novel rendering algorithm, MultiCBF, extended control barrier functions to support multi-directional feedback. Our system evaluation showed that compared to a no-feedback condition, AeroHaptix effectively reduced the number of collisions and input disagreement. Furthermore, operators reported that AeroHaptix was more helpful than force feedback, with improved situational awareness and comparable workload.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: AeroHaptix assists UAV operators with collision avoidance by delivering on-body spatial vibrotactile feedback about obstacle directions. Operators not only see and feel visible obstacles (yellow), but also perceive obstacles out of view (orange).
• Figure 2: Aerohaptix's hardware design, with an exploded view of a vibration unit.
• Figure 3: The data transmission on each chain used a two-byte UART protocol. The central unit sent a command with address n, and each unit deducted the address by 1 until it reached the target unit.
• Figure 4: Left: In the virtual reality environment, participants pointed in a spatial direction after perceiving a vibrotactile cue. Right: Example data points collected from one participant, where points of the same color were from the same actuator.
• Figure 5: Red dots depict the initial uniformly distributed layout, while blue dots depict the optimized layout. The lines represent the mappings between body positions and spatial directions on the left side of the body.