FlightAR: AR Flight Assistance Interface with Multiple Video Streams and Object Detection Aimed at Immersive Drone Control

The swift advancement of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies necessitates new standards for developing human-drone interaction (HDI) interfaces. Most interfaces for HDI, especially first-person view (FPV) goggles, limit the operator's ability to obtain information from the environment. This paper presents a novel interface, FlightAR, that integrates augmented reality (AR) overlays of UAV first-person view (FPV) and bottom camera feeds with head-mounted display (HMD) to enhance the pilot's situational awareness. Using FlightAR, the system provides pilots not only with a video stream from several UAV cameras simultaneously, but also the ability to observe their surroundings in real time. User evaluation with NASA-TLX and UEQ surveys showed low physical demand ($\mu=1.8$, $SD = 0.8$) and good performance ($\mu=3.4$, $SD = 0.8$), proving better user assessments in comparison with baseline FPV goggles. Participants also rated the system highly for stimulation ($\mu=2.35$, $SD = 0.9$), novelty ($\mu=2.1$, $SD = 0.9$) and attractiveness ($\mu=1.97$, $SD = 1$), indicating positive user experiences. These results demonstrate the potential of the system to improve UAV piloting experience through enhanced situational awareness and intuitive control. The code is available here: https://github.com/Sautenich/FlightAR

TiltXter: CNN-based Electro-tactile Rendering of Tilt Angle for Telemanipulation of Pasteur Pipettes

The shape of deformable objects can change drastically during grasping by robotic grippers, causing an ambiguous perception of their alignment and hence resulting in errors in robot positioning and telemanipulation. Rendering clear tactile patterns is fundamental to increasing users' precision and dexterity through tactile haptic feedback during telemanipulation. Therefore, different methods have to be studied to decode the sensors' data into haptic stimuli. This work presents a telemanipulation system for plastic pipettes that consists of a Force Dimension Omega.7 haptic interface endowed with two electro-stimulation arrays and two tactile sensor arrays embedded in the 2-finger Robotiq gripper. We propose a novel approach based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) to detect the tilt of deformable objects. The CNN generates a tactile pattern based on recognized tilt data to render further electro-tactile stimuli provided to the user during the telemanipulation. The study has shown that using the CNN algorithm, tilt recognition by users increased from 23.13\% with the downsized data to 57.9%, and the success rate during teleoperation increased from 53.12% using the downsized data to 92.18% using the tactile patterns generated by the CNN.

AirTouch: Towards Safe Human-Robot Interaction Using Air Pressure Feedback and IR Mocap System

The growing use of robots in urban environments has raised concerns about potential safety hazards, especially in public spaces where humans and robots may interact. In this paper, we present a system for safe human-robot interaction that combines an infrared (IR) camera with a wearable marker and airflow potential field. IR cameras enable real-time detection and tracking of humans in challenging environments, while controlled airflow creates a physical barrier that guides humans away from dangerous proximity to robots without the need for wearable devices. A preliminary experiment was conducted to measure the accuracy of the perception of safety barriers rendered by controlled air pressure. In a second experiment, we evaluated our approach in an imitation scenario of an interaction between an inattentive person and an autonomous robotic system. Experimental results show that the proposed system significantly improves a participant's ability to maintain a safe distance from the operating robot compared to trials without the system.

CoboGuider: Haptic Potential Fields for Safe Human-Robot Interaction

Modern industry still relies on manual manufacturing operations and safe human-robot interaction is of great interest nowadays. Speed and Separation Monitoring (SSM) allows close and efficient collaborative scenarios by maintaining a protective separation distance during robot operation. The paper focuses on a novel approach to strengthen the SSM safety requirements by introducing haptic feedback to a robotic cell worker. Tactile stimuli provide early warning of dangerous movements and proximity to the robot, based on the human reaction time and instantaneous velocities of robot and operator. A preliminary experiment was performed to identify the reaction time of participants when they are exposed to tactile stimuli in a collaborative environment with controlled conditions. In a second experiment, we evaluated our approach into a study case where human worker and cobot performed collaborative planetary gear assembly. Results show that the applied approach increased the average minimum distance between the robot's end-effector and hand by 44% compared to the operator relying only on the visual feedback. Moreover, the participants without the haptic support have failed several times to maintain the protective separation distance.