Evaluation of Path Planning with Force Feedback for Bilateral Teleoperation of Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems

The intervention of a human operator in tasks performed by aerial robots is relevant when the objectives require decisions that an online controller could not take adequately. In this regard, several path planning methods with haptic feedback have been proposed as teleoperation support, and their results have been outstanding in keeping the vehicle collision-free. However, from the teleoperator’s point of view, objective and subjective measurements are relevant to determine the influence that algorithms and data feedback project on the human immersed in the control of the vehicle. This work considers three types of strategies that involve visual feedback support, force feedback, and a three-dimensional path planning algorithm for bilateral teleoperation of aerial vehicles. All strategies are evaluated considering aspects such as success rate of executions, time required to complete the task, average velocity coordination error, kinetic energy of the haptic device, situation of awareness, and mental load. The results obtained show relevant differences between strategies, summarised in a table showing the advantages and drawbacks of one versus the other.