Close-Range HDI with Swarms

Close-Range Human-Drone Interaction with Swarms

Recent innovations in robotics have presented novel and compelling use cases of swarms such as visualisation, artistic expression, and surveillance. While swarms bring several opportunities, the current body of research only covers interaction at a distance. However, bringing swarms closer to human body opens up a variety of opportunities, which have not been explored yet. In order to bridge this gap we reviewed prior works to identify relevant scenarios for close-range human-drone swarms interactions (HSI), which we refer to as PEEP: Protect, Express, Extend, and Play. We demonstrate some of these scenarios through a proof-of-concept, showcasing the feasibility of HSI. Finally, we discuss enabling opportunities to expand this emerging space, such as novel interaction metaphors, swarm number-size ratio, physical-augmented representations, drone connectivity, and between-swarm interaction.