Ecological Interface Design for Collaboration of Multiple UAVs in Remote Areas

Ecological Interface Design for Collaboration of Multiple UAVs in Remote Areas

Van Lochem, S.

Borst, C. (mentor)
De Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor)
Mulder, M. (mentor)
Van Paassen, M.M. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Control & Simulation

ATM & Airports and Safety

2015-12-16

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be used to access remote areas that were otherwise inaccessible, for example, for surveillance missions. Collaboration between them can help overcome communication constraints by building airborne relay networks that allow beyond line of sight communication. This research investigates if a single operator can supervise multiple UAVs in a collaborative surveillance task under communication constraints. For this purpose and ecological interface was designed to support operators in their task and to bring flexibility in the system. A human-in-the-loop evaluation study was performed to investigate the successfulness of operators in the control task of such a mission including an analysis of individual components of the interface. It was shown that operators are able to successfully operate surveillance missions under communication- and battery constraints. Participants did however not completely do this without separation conflicts and communication losses, which indicates that the interface lacks elements representing endurance and separation assurance. To an extent the interface design turned out to be scalable, with a few remaining visualizations that still suffered from this problem. More advanced ways of displaying information on request and grouping of select information is thought to offer opportunities to improve ground control interface on this matter.

ecological interface design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:483b3b05-4e72-44a2-840b-a207e06990af

2020-12-04

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Van Lochem, S.