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Feeling of Safety and Comfort towards a Socially Assistive Unmanned Aerial Vehicle That Monitors People in a Virtual Home

2021; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/s21030908

1424-8220

Lidia M. Belmonte, Arturo S. García, Rafael Morales, José Luis de la Vara, Francisco López de la Rosa, Antonio Fernández‐Caballero,

Robotic Path Planning Algorithms

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) represent a new model of social robots for home care of dependent persons. In this regard, this article introduces a study on people’s feeling of safety and comfort while watching the monitoring trajectory of a quadrotor dedicated to determining their condition. Three main parameters are evaluated: the relative monitoring altitude, the monitoring velocity and the shape of the monitoring path around the person (ellipsoidal or circular). For this purpose, a new trajectory generator based on a state machine, which is successfully implemented and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink®, is described. The study is carried out with 37 participants using a virtual reality (VR) platform based on two modules, UAV simulator and VR Visualiser, both communicating through the MQTT protocol. The participants’ preferences have been a high relative monitoring altitude, a high monitoring velocity and a circular path. These choices are a starting point for the design of trustworthy socially assistive UAVs flying in real homes.