Mapping Safe Zones for Co-located Human-UAV Interaction

TL;DR

The results show that multiple drones cause more discomfort when close to a co-located human than a single drone, and safe-fly zones for multiple drones are presented.

Abstract

Recent advances in robotics bring us closer to the reality of living, co-habiting, and sharing personal spaces with robots. However, it is not clear how close a co-located robot can be to a human in a shared environment without making the human uncomfortable or anxious. This research aims to map safe and comfortable zones for co-located aerial robots. The objective is to identify the distances at which a drone causes discomfort to a co-located human and to create a map showing no-fly, moderate-fly, and safe-fly zones. We recruited a total of 18 participants and conducted two indoor laboratory experiments, one with a single drone and the other set with two drones. Our results show that multiple drones cause more discomfort when close to a co-located human than a single drone. We observed that distances below 200 cm caused discomfort, the moderate fly zone was 200 - 300 cm, and the safe-fly zone was any distance greater than 300 cm in single drone experiments. The safe zones were pushed further away by 100 cm for the multiple drone experiments. In this paper, we present the preliminary findings on safe-fly zones for multiple drones. Further work would investigate the impact of a higher number of aerial robots, the speed of approach, direction of travel, and noise level on co-located humans, and autonomously develop 3D models of trust zones and safe zones for co-located aerial swarms.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: Experiment setup layout
• Figure 2: Conducting the experiments. Labels: (1) Pilots, (2) Observer, (3) Participants, and (4) Drones.
• Figure 3: Experiment 1 Setup A path 1 -- 6 results. UAV navigation goes from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4 etc. as indicated by the numbers at the ends of each line segment, finishing at 11 (or 9 for Path6). Blue arrows show the direction of UAV travel. Red dots indicate the position of the UAV when the discomfort button is pressed.
• Figure 4: Experiment 1A path blindfold test results. Blue arrows show the direction of UAV travel. Red dots indicate the position of the UAV when the discomfort button is pressed. UAV navigation goes from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4 etc. as indicated by the numbers at the ends of each line segment, finishing at 11. Text on the line segments shows flight segment velocities in cm/s.
• Figure 5: UAV comfortable distance zoning using histogram and segment plots