Drone Near Me

Personal drones are becoming more mainstream and are used for a variety of tasks, such as delivery and photography. The exposed blades in conventional drones raise serious safety concerns. To address this, commercial drones have been moving towards a safe-to-touch design or have increased safety by adding propeller guards. The affordances of safe-to-touch drones enable new types of touch-based human-drone interaction. Various applications have been explored, such as augmented sports and haptic feedback in virtual reality; however, it is unclear if individuals feel comfortable using direct touch and manipulation when interacting with safe-to-touch drones. A previous elicitation study showed how users naturally interact with drones. We replicated this study with an unsafe and a safe-to-touch drone, to find out if participants will instinctively use touch as a means of interacting with the safe-to-touch drone. We found that 58% of the participants used touch, and across all tasks 39% of interactions were touch-based. The proposed touch interactions were in agreement for 67% of the tasks, and users reported that interacting with the safe-to-touch drone was significantly less mentally demanding than the unsafe drone.