Knowing You, Seeing Me: Investigating User Preferences in Drone-Human Acknowledgement

In the past, human proxemics research has poorly predicted human robot interaction distances. This paper presents three studies on drone gestures to acknowledge human presence and clarify suitable acknowledging distances. We evaluated four drone gestures based on non-verbal human greetings. The gestures included orienting towards the counterpart and salutation gestures. We tested these individually and in combination to create a feeling of acknowledgement in people. Our users preferred being acknowledged from two meters away but gestures were also effective from four meters. Rotating the drone towards the user elicited a higher degree of acknowledgement than without. We conclude with a set design guidelines for drone gestures.