An experimental study of wearable technology and immersive virtual reality for drone operator training

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in construction and heavy civil projects in tasks such as surveying and mapping, safety and progress monitoring, and site surveillance. Flying a drone, however, requires the operator to maintain his or her body posture for an extended time while holding the controller and looking up to monitor drone movements, causing awkward body postures, stress, and fatigue. When coupled with the mental workload as a result of delegated tasks, this could potentially put the drone mission, people, and property in jeopardy. In this study, an analysis of drone operator's physiological data collected by wearable devices at the time of virtual reality (VR) training and during real-world deployment is performed. The goal of this research is to provide a basis for understanding the effectiveness of VR training by verifying if similar task complexity in VR and real-world experiments results in similar patterns in drone operator's performance, mental workload, and stress.