Virtual Reality Based Remote Drone Operations

Although drones provide many use cases in various applications, highly trained operators are often required to safely fly them and accomplish missions. This requirement oftentimes is a barrier for widespread adoption of drones in a number of applications by users of limited experience. Recent efforts to explore avenues to increase participation of non-expert users have included the development of a natural user interface using hand gestures and voice commands. In order to expand and encourage the adoption of UAS operations by regular users with limited training, the goal of this effort is to develop a virtual environment for drone operations, by leveraging the developments in Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (V/AR) technology. Within this Virtual Reality Environment (VRE), the operator would be able to control the drones through intuitive hand gestures, thereby forgoing the traditional interface of a hand held radio controller. Both virtual reality and drone technology are fairly new, allowing for numerous design choices in terms of hardware and software. This research effort is unique in the aspect of exploring the ability to control drones from a third person view in a virtual environment.

Motion Capture Setup

Operator Views

Results from a Triangle Flight Path Maneuver

Publications

1. Rajashekar, S.C., Tourani, R., Gururajan, S., “Secure Communications in Unmanned Aerial System Swarms,” AIAA AVIATION 2020 FORUM. AIAA AVIATION Forum: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; 2020. doi:10.2514/6.2020-2926

2. Rajashekar, S.C., Gururajan, S., Esposito, F., Ferry, D., “Reconfigurable swarms and multi-user, cooperative UAS flights through a virtual reality interface”, Accepted for publication and presentation at the 2020 AIAA SciTech Forum and Exposition, January 2020.

3. Rajashekar, S.C., Muhammad, W., Esposito, F., Wang, J., Gottsacker, M., Gururajan, S., “Vocal Intent Programmability for UAS in Disaster Scenarios,” 2020 AIAA SciTech Forum and Exposition, January 2020.

4. Anderson, N., Gao, J., Whitman, E., and Gururajan, S., "Development of a Virtual Reality Environment (VRE) for Intuitive Drone Operations," SAE Technical Paper 2017-01-2070, 2017