TagTeam: Towards Wearable-Assisted, Implicit Guidance for Human--Drone Teams

TL;DR

This paper introduces TagTeam, a prototype system enabling wearable-assisted, implicit guidance for human--drone teams, enhancing search-and-rescue operations through passive data exchange and motion awareness.

Contribution

It presents a novel prototype system for human--drone teams that leverages wearable sensors for implicit guidance and demonstrates key capabilities like motion awareness.

Findings

Successful demonstration of motion awareness in the prototype

Enhanced speed and accuracy in search-and-rescue scenarios

Passive exchange of intent and data within the team

Abstract

The availability of sensor-rich smart wearables and tiny, yet capable, unmanned vehicles such as nano quadcopters, opens up opportunities for a novel class of highly interactive, attention-shared human--machine teams. Reliable, lightweight, yet passive exchange of intent, data and inferences within such human--machine teams make them suitable for scenarios such as search-and-rescue with significantly improved performance in terms of speed, accuracy and semantic awareness. In this paper, we articulate a vision for such human--drone teams and key technical capabilities such teams must encompass. We present TagTeam, an early prototype of such a team and share promising demonstration of a key capability (i.e., motion awareness).