A Drone Teacher: Designing Physical Human-Drone Interactions for Movement Instruction

Drones (micro unmanned aerial vehicles) are becoming more prevalent in applications that bring them into close human spaces. This is made possible in part by clear drone-to-human communication strategies. However, current auditory and visual communication methods only work with strict environmental settings. To continue expanding the possibilities for drones to be useful in human spaces, we explore ways to overcome these limitations through physical touch. We present a new application for drones--physical instructive feedback. To do this we designed three different physical interaction modes for a drone. We then conducted a user study (N=12) to answer fundamental questions of where and how people want to physically interact with drones, and what people naturally infer the physical touch is communicating. We then used these insights to conduct a second user study (N=14) to understand the best way for a drone to communicate instructions to a human in a movement task. We found that continuous physical feedback is both the preferred mode and is more effective at providing instruction than incremental feedback.