Citation

Lam TM, Mulder M, van Paassen MMR. Int. J. Aviat. Psychol. 2007; 17(2): 167-195.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10508410701328649

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since the human operator of an unmanned aerial vehicle is physically separated from the vehicle during tele-operation, the operator cannot perceive and integrate the multiple-sensory information that is normally available. This often results in control difficulties and a lack of situation awareness. Extending the visual interface to a multi-sensory interface could allow the tele-operator to better perceive and integrate the information about the environment and its constraints. The use of force feedback through a haptic control device allows the operator to perceive information of the environment through the sense of touch. This would complement the visual information and is hypothesized to increase situation awareness, especially in situations where visual information is insufficient. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a novel virtual force field that maps environment constraints to virtual forces on a control stick. The force field was designed in such a way that its size and shape, hence the field sensitivity, could be determined through adjustments of its parameters. An experimental evaluation to investigate the effectiveness of the haptic interface showed that the interface reduces the amount of collisions considerably, contributing to a higher level of safety when a complex task needs to be performed with limited visual information. However, the haptic interface slightly increased operator workload and control activity.