Virtual Borders in 3D: Defining a Drone’s Movement Space Using Augmented Reality

Robots are increasingly finding their way into home environments, where they can assist with household tasks like vacuuming or surveilling. While the robots can navigate on their own, users might not want them to go everywhere or not in a specific way. For example, users might not want a drone to fly over a table where important letters and the newspaper are stored, even though it is the shortest path to the goal. Therefore, an application is required, that is easy to learn and to apply even for inexperienced users.In this paper, we present a framework that uses a tablet as augmented reality (AR) device to modify a robot’s movement space in 3D. A user can define virtual borders in the real world with the tablet and add them to a map, changing the navigational behavior of the robot. The framework is evaluated by a user study with inexperienced participants that verifies our approach. Further analyses show, that even complex scenarios can be covered with our framework.