A First Investigation into the Teleoperation of a Miniature Rotorcraft

This paper presents preliminary results for research on the development of a systematic approach for the analysis and design of teleoperation systems for miniature rotorcrafts. Through teleoperation it is possible to take advantage of the human cognitive abilities and control skills when performing precision flight tasks remotely. Miniature rotorcrafts provide unique capabilities for operation indoors or near buildings and infrastructure. However, they also present some unique challenges due to their limited payload and challenging dynamics. Successful aerial teleoperation will depend on our ability to implement control augmentations, and in parallel, relay the necessary cues to the operator to perform the task. To optimize the design of such a system, we need to be able to quantify the operator workload and task performance and have a systematic way to use those metrics to determine the effectiveness of the control augmentation and operator cueing being tested. The paper introduces the key aerial teleoperation challenges and uses an example flight task to illustrate our design and analysis framework.