Haptic Interface for UAV Teleoperation: Changing Haptic Control Device Stiffness based on Environmental Constraints

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) teleoperators suffer from a reduced situational awareness, contributing to a high UAV accident rate. The implementation of a haptic interface is a way to provide them with more information about obstacles in the environment in order to compensate for this. Research focused on systems that actively help the teleoperator to avoid collision at a last stage. The haptic interface as described in this paper guides the teleoperator in a more passive way, making him aware of unsafe trajectories in an earlier stage instead of actively trying to avoid collision. This new haptic interface changes the stiffness of the control device based on environmental constraints, leading to a changing non-linear force-displacement relationship for the control device. In order to explore the performance of this haptic interface, off-line simulations and a human-in-theloop experiment have been performed. The results of the off-line simulations showed the potential to prevent collisions at an early stage. However, the results of the human-in-the-loop experiment do not show the expected improvements for the haptic interface, no significant differences can be identified. The cause of this is hypothesized to be both due to a low task difficulty level and the boundaries of the feedback not corresponding to the physical dimensions of the UAV. However, significant differences were identified when comparing the design choices of the haptic interface.

Subject

UAV
haptic interface
haptic feedback
stiffness
teleoperation

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master thesis

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