Cleared for Safe Take-off? Improving the Usability of Mission Preparation to Mitigate the Safety Risks of Drone Operations

Title of the Paper

Cleared for Safe Take-off? Improving the Usability of Mission Preparation to Mitigate the Safety Risks of Drone Operations

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Mission planning and safety assessment in drone operations
• Keywords: Drone operations, human-computer interaction, safety assessment, mission planning, risk management, SORA method, collaborative design, map visualization, data reliability, online tools

Research Background and Issues

• Issues or Challenges:

  • Drone operations for high-risk missions (e.g., beyond visual line of sight flights, complex terrains) require rigorous safety assessments and regulatory approval. These preparation tasks are complex and time-consuming, yet there is little research addressing these issues.
  • Current tools primarily support the flight phase while neglecting the mission planning and post-flight phases.
  • There is a lack of field data to inform the design of drone mission planning systems, as well as limited understanding of collaborative and safety assessment workflows.

• Significance:

  • The mission planning phase occupies the majority of technical work in drone operations (accounting for 60-70%), directly impacting mission safety and efficiency.
  • As drone missions become more frequent and complex, optimizing mission preparation processes to reduce safety risks is increasingly critical.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • The authors reviewed existing drone operation regulations, safety support literature, and studies on the SORA method, identifying gaps and urgent needs in the mission preparation phase of drone operations.

Solution

• Research Methods:

  • Interview Study: Conducted in-depth interviews with 14 drone operation managers, safety assessment consultants, and 2 regulatory personnel to understand mission preparation processes and challenges.
  • Survey Study: Used follow-up questionnaires to validate interview findings and gather feedback on design recommendations.

• Main Contributions:

  1. Described the practices and tool usage of drone professionals during mission preparation.
  2. Proposed a three-phase collaborative workflow model for drone operation authorization and nine design recommendations for future mission preparation tools.
  3. Identified design requirements and opportunities to guide the development of drone mission planning tools.

Research Outcomes

• Main Phases of Drone Missions:

  1. Mission Planning: Includes defining the concept of operations (ConOps), assessing operational risks, and applying for permits.
  2. Flight Execution.
  3. Post-flight Analysis.

• Key Findings and Recommendations:

  1. Recommendation 1: Synchronize with clients to establish the concept of operations, reducing gaps between client needs and mission feasibility.
  2. Recommendation 2: Systematically use operational parameters (OpParam) to describe missions, supporting systematic analysis of their impact on safety.
  3. Recommendation 3: Support identifying relevant legal provisions and safety requirements based on mission parameters.
  4. Recommendation 4: Provide tools to explore operational parameters and estimate their impact on mission safety.
  5. Recommendation 5: Develop reliable data tools recognized by regulatory agencies or solutions to mitigate unreliable data.
  6. Recommendation 6: Support the representation and manipulation of operational parameters on maps to facilitate intuitive mission risk assessment.
  7. Recommendation 7: Provide editable templates with version control, automatically updating linked elements and generating required documents.
  8. Recommendation 8: Identify third parties, protocols, and deadlines for necessary approvals early in mission preparation.
  9. Recommendation 9: Provide transparent information on the current status of mission applications to relevant stakeholders.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • The nine recommendations received positive feedback from participants through follow-up questionnaires and were deemed effective in improving mission preparation tool design.
  • Average priority ranking: exploring operational parameters (Recommendation 4), identifying legal requirements (Recommendation 3), and providing application status transparency (Recommendation 9).

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • All participants were from France, but the findings are applicable to other regions using the SORA method for drone operations.
  • Recommendations require further validation through field experiments to assess their practical utility.
  • Explore interactive design prototypes combining map visualization, automated risk assessment, and collaborative support.

Summary and Design Implications

• Design Tensions:

  1. Balancing safety and commercial objectives.
  2. Balancing safety and process automation.
  3. Balancing individual operation and collaborative tasks.

• Future Design Opportunities:

  • Map-based safety analysis: Using maps to explore risks and make mission planning more intuitive and specific.
  • Automated risk assessment: Applying expert systems to process parameters and regulatory requirements, enhancing efficiency while ensuring safety.
  • Development of collaborative support tools: Strengthening transparent communication and coordination among stakeholders to alleviate stress caused by delays or missing information.

Practical Significance

The proposed model and recommendations provide a theoretical foundation for designing safer and more user-friendly drone mission planning tools, while also opening new research avenues for interaction design and collaborative support in future drone mission planning.