Haptic Interface For UAV Collision Avoidance

Abstract

In the tele-operation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the operator is physically separated from the vehicle. The degradation of the multiple-sensory information that is normally available often results in control difficulties and a lack of situation awareness. Extending the visual interface to a multi-sensory interface could allow the tele-operator to better perceive and integrate the information about the environment and its constraints. The use of force feedback through a haptic control device allows the operator to perceive information of the environment through the sense of touch. This would complement the visual information and is hypothesized to increase situation awareness, especially in situations where visual information is insufficient. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a novel virtual force field that maps environment constraints to virtual forces on a control stick. The force field was designed in such a way that its size and shape, hence the field sensitivity, could be determined through adjustments of its parameters. An experimental evaluation was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the haptic interface. Results show that the haptic interface reduces the amount of collisions considerably, contributing to a higher level of safety when a complex task needs to be performed with limited visual information. Operator workload and control activity, however, slightly increased with the haptic interface.