Human-Robot Interface for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle via a Leap Motion

The unmanned aircraft vehicles industry is in the ascendant while traditional interaction ways for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are not intuitive enough. It is difficult for a beginner to control a UAV, therefore natural interaction methods are preferred. This paper presents a novel interactive control method for a UAV through operator爷s gesture, and explores the natural interaction method for the UAV. The proposed system uses the leap motion controller as an input device acquiring the gesture position and orientation data. It is found that the proposed human-robot interface can track the movement of the operator with satisfactory accuracy. The biggest advantage of the proposed method is its capability to control the UAV by just one hand instead of a joystick. A series of experiments verified the feasibility of the proposed human-robot interface. The results demonstrate that non-professional operators can easily operate a remote UAV by just using this system. © 2019 Editorial Department of Journal of Beijing Institute of Technology .