Increasing Acceptance of Haptic Feedback in UAV Teleoperation by Visualizing Force Fields

Haptic interfaces have been developed to assist human operators controlling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) beyond line-of-sight. These systems complement the predominantly camera-based visual interfaces and act like a collision avoidance system: when nearing obstacles, the operator gets re-directed by the haptic force feedback. Previous research showed that, although being successful in reducing the number of collisions, these haptic interfaces also lead to lower user acceptance, as the operators do not always understand the system's intentions. This paper discusses two novel visualizations which were developed to increase operator acceptance. Both designs were evaluated in a human-in-the-loop experiment (n = 12). Results from acceptance-related questionnaires show that our subjects preferred teleoperating the UAV with the visualizations active. Acceptance ratings were higher for the same levels of safety, performance and operator workload