User-Centric Payload Design and Usability Testing for Agricultural Sensor Placement and Retrieval using Off-the-Shelf Micro Aerial Vehicles

Increased flight time and advanced sensors are making Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) easier to use, facilitating their widespread adoption in fields such as precision agriculture or environmental monitoring. However, current applications are limited mainly to passive visual observation from far above; to enable the next generation of aerial robot applications, MAV s must begin to directly physically interact with objects in the environment, such as placing and collecting sensors. Enabling these applications for a wide spectrum of end-users is only possible if the mechanism is safe and easy to use, without overburdening the user with complex integration, complicated control, or overwhelming and convoluted feedback. To this end we propose a self-sufficient passive payload system to enable both the deployment and retrieval of sensors for agriculture. This mechanism can be simply mechanically attached to a commercial, off-the-shelf MAV, without requiring further electrical or software integration. The user-centric design and mechanical intelligence of the system facilitates ease of use through simplified control with targeted perceptual feedback. The usability of the system is validated quantitatively and qualitatively in a user study demonstrating sensor deployment and collection. All participants were able to deploy and collect at least four sensors both within 10 minutes in visual line-of-sight and within 12 minutes in beyond visualline-of-sight, after only three minutes of practice. Enabling MAVs to physically interact with their environment will usher in the next stage of MAV utility and applications. Complex tasks, such as sensor deployment and retrieval, can be realized relatively simply, by relying on a mechanically passive system designed with the user in mind, these payloads can enable such applications to be more widely available and inclusive to end-users.