Evaluating Distances in Tactile Human-Drone Interaction

The increasing autonomy and presence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), especially quadrotors, in everyday applications requires in-depth studies of proxemics in Human-Drone Interaction (HDI) and novel methods of user interaction suitable for different distances. This paper presents a user study (N=32) that evaluates proxemics with a miniature quadrotor (92 mm wheelbase) from four directions (front, back, left, right) in a seated setting investigating preferred approach directions and distances in future home or workplace scenarios. The goal of this study is to determine if humans are willing to allow flying robots of that size and mechanical appearance to approach close enough to enable tactile interaction. Moreover, the participants' inclination to physically interact with the quadrotor is examined. Studies evaluating proxemics in HDI are highly dependent on repeatable results and actually flying robots. In most comparable studies, the quadrotors used did not fly freely or at all, but were moved, manually controlled, or flew barely repeatable trajectories due to unstable onboard navigation. Only few studies have used pose estimation systems that ensure smooth and reproducible trajectories and thus reliable findings of the studies. For this reason, in addition to the presented study and its results, an insight into the used testbed is provided, that also integrates full skeleton pose estimation rather than tracking participants with only a single marker.