SwarmCloak: Landing of a Swarm of Nano-Quadrotors on Human Arms
This work addresses human-swarm interaction for more intuitive deployment, but it is incremental as it builds on existing feedback methods.
The researchers tackled the problem of landing multiple nano-quadrotors on human arms by developing SwarmCloak, a system using light-sensitive pads with vibrotactile feedback, and found that combining tactile and visual feedback yields the best landing performance, especially as the number of drones increases.
We propose a novel system SwarmCloak for landing of a fleet of four flying robots on the human arms using light-sensitive landing pads with vibrotactile feedback. We developed two types of wearable tactile displays with vibromotors which are activated by the light emitted from the LED array at the bottom of quadcopters. In a user study, participants were asked to adjust the position of the arms to land up to two drones, having only visual feedback, only tactile feedback or visual-tactile feedback. The experiment revealed that when the number of drones increases, tactile feedback plays a more important role in accurate landing and operator's convenience. An important finding is that the best landing performance is achieved with the combination of tactile and visual feedback. The proposed technology could have a strong impact on the human-swarm interaction, providing a new level of intuitiveness and engagement into the swarm deployment just right from the skin surface.