DroneCTRL: A Tangible Remote Input Control for Quadcopters

Abstract

Recent research has presented quadcopters to enable mid-air interaction. Using quadcopters to provide tactile feedback, navigation, or user input are the current scope of related work. However, most quadcopter steering systems are complicated to use for non-expert users or require an expensive tracking system for autonomous flying. Safety-critical scenarios require trained and expensive personnel to navigate quadcopters through crucial flight paths within narrow spaces. To simplify the input and manual operation of quadcopters, we present DroneCTRL, a tangible pointing device to navigate quadcopters. DroneCTRL resembles a remote control including optional visual feedback by a laser pointer and tangibility to improve the quadcopter control usability for non-expert users. In a preliminary user study, we compare the efficiency of hardware and software-based controller with DroneCTRL. Our results favor the usage of DroneCTRL with and without visual feedback to achieve more precision and accuracy.