User studies of a head-mounted display for search and rescue teleoperation of UAVs via satellite link

The teleoperation project for search and rescue applications CopKa investigates how a controllable UAV, equipped with a video camera, can assist firefighters over a GEO satellite communication relay. The aim of this project is to provide firefighters located at an emergency center with an intuitive tool that allows for fast and risk free visual evaluation of a situation of danger and to promptly initiate supporting measures. Therefore, we propose a human system interface concept which integrates real-time reconstruction of the environment and predictive modeling of UAV with a virtual reality device (HTC Vive, HTC Corporation, Taiwan) as a remote user interface for realistic operability. As a first step, two simulations of typical search and rescue scenarios have been developed to analyze the user behavior. With these simulations, the position and rotation of the hands and the head of 37 participants were recorded in a study in order to quantify the usability and motion. The participants had to accomplish different tasks, e.g., find potential hazard and the number of injured people. It was possible to extract the requirements for the UAV, as well as for the proposed human system interface, in terms of time of flight, rotation speed of the drone and camera gimbal, necessary accelerations and speeds for moving the UAV in an intuitive way.