A Visual-Haptic Display for Human and Autonomous Systems Integration

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel concept of visual-haptic display for situational awareness improvement for crowded and low altitude airspace situations. It presents first the visual augmentation display that constitutes of Virtual Fences delimiting no-fly zones, and a specific threei-dimensional highlight graphics that enhances visibility of other autonomous (or not) agents in the area. Then it presents the shared control paradigm and the Haptic Force generation mechanism, based on a\ud Proportional-Derivative-like controller applied to repulsive forces generated by the Virtual Fences and other UAVs. Simulations with 26 pilots were performed in a photo-realistic synthetic environment showing that the Visual-haptic Display outperforms the Visual Display only at helping the pilot keeping distance from no-\ud fly zones and other vehicles

Effect of Haptic Feedback on Pilot/Operator Performance During Flight Simulation

“…Haptic feedback was provided in the form of attractive and repulsive magnetic forces by defining an artificial force field in obstacle avoidance tasks and exploratory missions. It was demonstrated that the number of collisions and time of mission completion were reduced, due to such haptic cues [8,9]. Control barrier functions (CBF) have been used to generate force feedback for a quadcopter UAV to aid a safe operation and were evaluated against two conditions, that is, no haptic aids and artificial force fields [10].…”