Increasing Acceptance of Tactile Feedback in UAV Teleoperations by Visualizing Force Fields

Abstract

Due to the increasing complexity of controlling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), researchers have been trying to let automation take part of the UAV control in order to eliminate human error and reduce the workload of the operator. Such a system has been developed for UAV teleoperators which incorporates haptic feedback on the control stick based on a Collision Avoidance System (CAS). When nearing obstacles, the operator gets redirected by the haptic feedback and so avoiding a possible collision. However from previous and similar studies it was stated that haptic interfaces have a low user acceptance due to the limited knowledge and insight of the pilots on the automation. To improve the acceptance of the haptic feedback system this research adds additional visualizations to an existing interface. In order to evaluate these newly designed visuals, a human-in-the-loop experiment was performed. Results show that there were no significant differences between the different configurations, however, acceptance questionnaires filled in by the participants revealed that they preferred operating an UAV with additional visualizations. This means that raising the acceptance of the haptic interface was accomplished without deterioration of the operators safety, performance and workload.