Gesture-Controlled Aerial Robot Formation for Human-Swarm Interaction in Safety Monitoring Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a gesture-controlled UAV formation system for human-swarm interaction, enhancing safety monitoring by enabling contactless commands and real-time human detection onboard UAVs.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated onboard system combining gesture recognition, human detection, and formation control for UAV swarms in safety applications.

Findings

Effective human detection and tracking onboard UAVs

Responsive gesture-based command execution

Successful real-world UAV formation experiments

Abstract

This paper presents a formation control approach for contactless gesture-based Human-Swarm Interaction (HSI) between a team of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and a human worker. The approach is designed to monitor the safety of human workers, particularly those operating at heights. In the proposed dynamic formation scheme, one UAV acts as the formation leader, equipped with sensors for detecting human workers and recognizing gestures. The follower UAVs maintain a predetermined formation relative to the worker's position, providing additional perspectives of the monitored scene. Hand gestures enable the human worker to specify movement and action commands for the UAV team and to initiate other mission-related tasks without requiring additional communication channels or specific markers. Combined with a novel unified human detection and tracking algorithm, a human position estimation method, and a gesture detection pipeline, the proposed approach represents the first instance of an HSI system incorporating all these modules onboard real-world UAVs. Simulations and field experiments involving three UAVs and a human worker in a mock-up scenario demonstrate the effectiveness and responsiveness of the proposed approach.