Force feedback for collision avoidance in UAV teleoperation through virtual corridors

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs), usually called drones, are either auto-piloted or remotely controlled vehicles used for different purposes like pollution monitoring, research, military purposes, pilot training, education, search and rescue operations, and many other fields. With the increasing use of UAVs, it is important to increase the safety of drones. This research is an effort towards the development of a test bench for haptically-enabled control of a UAV through a virtual corridor. The flight of a fixed-wing UAV is modeled and a force feedback haptic device is used to control the virtual UAV in a virtual environment. The view on-board the virtual UAV is presented through procedural terrain modeling and a parametrized haptic rendering algorithm defines the profile of force feedback experienced by the operator. The 3D virtual environment is generated in Unity and a Touch 3D Stylus haptic device is used to provide corridor protection forces. We test the longitudinal motion of the UAV for several different radii of the virtual corridor and different force feedback profiles. The analysis of our results shows that force feedback is helpful in corridor protection.