Haptic feedback and visual servoing of teleoperated unmanned aerial vehicle for obstacle awareness and avoidance

Abstract

Obstacle avoidance represents a fundamental challenge for unmanned aerial vehicle navigation. This is particularly relevant for low altitude flight, which is highly subjected to collisions, causing property damage or even compromise human safety. Autonomous navigation algorithms address this problem and are applied in various tasks. However, this approach is usually overshadowed by unreliable results in uncertain environments. In contrast, human pilots are able to maneuver vehicles in complex situations, in which an algorithm would no offer a reliable performance. This article explores a novel configuration of assisted flying and implements an experimental setup in order to prove its efficacy. The user controls an unmanned aerial vehicle with a force feedback device, where simultaneously an assisted navigation algorithm can manipulate this apparatus to divert the unmanned aerial vehicle from its path. Experiments confirm the authors’ hypothesis that the unmanned aerial vehicle is deviated or maintains the same course at the operator’s will. Unlike conventional controllers that dictate roll, pitch, and yaw, this implementation uses direct mapping between the position represented by the haptic device and the unmanned aerial vehicle. This configuration applies feedback before the unmanned aerial vehicle has reached the position referenced by the haptic device, providing valuable time for the user to make the necessary path correction.

Telelocomotion—Remotely Operated Legged Robots

“…In a reliable system, the robot is tasked with autonomous subtasks, while operator intervention is left for high-level decision making, such as obstacle avoidance or managing a team of robots [4]. In addition, properly incorporated haptic feedback can improve teleoperator performance [5] in the fields of robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery [6], control in cluttered environments [7,8], obstacle avoidance in aerial navigation [9], and programming welding robots [10] to name a few.…”

Haptically assisted chemotaxis for odor source localization

“…3) has been comprehensively analyzed in previous work [54,56]. Furthermore, this device has been used to control an UAV by a human operator, where the implemented software for this application diverted the UAV trajectory in case of an impending obstacle collision [53]. Five seven-bar mechanisms comprise the apparatus, each with two degrees of freedom (DOFs) and the corresponding number of motors.…”

“…Haptics has found a niche application in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) navigation, which has received attention in the last decade [33,36], particularly quadcopters, which have reduced the costs and dangers involved in their use. Haptic-enhanced UAV navigation research focuses on the implementation of force feedback algorithms to enhance the capability to avoid obstacles [33,53]. These tactationbased navigation systems provide information to a human operator that has the final control over the device; however, this scheme has not been used in olfaction-based arrangements.…”

Control system for the haptic paddle used in mobile robotics

“…6 The haptic application of robot-assisted surgery utilizing magneto-rheological and electro-rheological fluids as haptic actuators is described by Song et al 7 and Lee et al 8 and the possibilities of combinations of teleoperation and haptic feedback by Yin et al 9 Another field is the control of manned or unmanned robots and aircrafts. This gives the human the feedback information about forces acting in controls 10 and structural changes like wing deflection 11,12 or behaviour of aircraft in turbulences like in the study by Ruff et al 13 Haptic devices could also be used in driving assistance by land vehicles like in the studies by Steele and Gillespie and Liu et al, 14,15 and the behaviour of the driver response to haptic perception is described by Kochhar et al 16 Figure 1. Human senses used in haptic perception.…”