International audience

Drone operations such as power line inspection, automated deliveries, or crowd control are becoming more widespread. For flights that present serious risks to human safety, operators must conduct safety assessments and get authorizations from the regulators. These preparation tasks are complex and time-consuming but few previous works addressed them. We interviewed 14 professional drone operators, safety study consultants, and 2 regulators to better understand the needs for these tasks. The result is a workable model of the tasks which includes defining the concept of operation, assessing operational risks, and negotiating for authorization. We devised 9 recommendations to inform the design of future mission preparation tools, and consolidated them with a follow-up questionnaire. The recommendations include systematically describing a mission with operational parameters, showing their estimated impact on mission safety, or enabling awareness of the application’s status among all stakeholders. We conclude with design concerns and opportunities to inform future research.

Given the high attentional demand in aircraft cockpits, tactons can be used to deliver information without overloading the visual and auditory channels. However, aircraft are subject to turbulence that interfere with vibrotactile feedback. To investigate the impact of turbulence on tacton identification, 18 participants tried to identify 9 tactons with varying intensity and rhythm, while experiencing uncomfortable and very uncomfortable levels of mechanical vibration defined in ISO 2631-1. The results show that the effectiveness of tactile communication decreases with the rhythm identification performance as the level of turbulence increases. In our study, an RMS acceleration delta of 0.70 Grms between two consecutive tactons guaranteed near zero confusion. Based on their experience performing the study, participants built tactons that included 4 pulses, lasted for at least 350 ms and vibrated at no less than 1.25 Grms to be comfortably perceived. Our results will support practitioners for designing tactons that can be more resilient to turbulence.

Flying drones is an increasingly popular activity. However, it is challenging due to the required perceptual and motor skills for following and stabilizing the drone, especially for people with special needs. This paper describes CandyFly, an application supporting people with diverse sensory, cognitive and motor impairments to pilot drones. We observed an existing accessible piloting workshop and evaluated CandyFly during eight additional workshops over three and a half years using a research-through-design process and ability-based design methods. We identified users’ needs, formulated requirements and explored adaptive interactions such as using pressure-sensitive keys, adjusting controls to the pilots’ range of motion, or limiting the drone’s degrees of freedom to cope with a broad range of disabilities. Our results show that the pilots and their caregivers enjoyed flying and emphasized CandyFly’s ability to be tailored to specific needs. Our findings offer a framework for designing adaptable systems and can support the design of future assistive and recreational systems.

Drones have become fixtures in commerce, safety efforts, and in homes as a leisure activity. Researchers have started to explore how drones can support people with disabilities in piloting and serve as assistive devices. Our work focuses on people with vision impairment and investigates what motivates them to fly drones. We administered a survey to visually impaired adults that gauged general interest in drone piloting and previous experience with drones. From the 59 survey responses, we interviewed 13 participants to elaborate on how they envision using drones and how different feedback and modes of piloting can make the flying experience more accessible. We found that our participants had overarching interests in aviation, trying new technology, environment exploration, and finding collaborative activities to do with their sighted family members, which extended to an interest in piloting drones. This research helps lay groundwork for design scenarios and accessible features for future drones.

Automation is one of the key solutions proposed and adopted by international Air Transport research programs to meet the challenges of increasing air traffic. For automation to be safe and usable, it needs to be suitable to the activity it supports, both when authoring it and when operating it. Here we present Vizir, a Domain-Specific Graphical Language and an Environment for authoring and operating airport automations. We used a participatory-design process with Air Traffic Controllers to gather requirements for Vizir and to design its features. Vizir combines visual interaction-oriented programming constructs with activity-related geographic areas and events. Vizir offers explicit human-control constructs, graphical substrates and means to scale-up with multiple automations. We propose a set of guidelines to inspire designers of similar usable hybrid human-automation systems.

Contemporary music composition is a highly creative and disciplined activity that requires free expression of ideas and sophisticated computer programming. This paper presents a technique for structured observation of expert creative behavior, as well as Polyphony, a novel interface for systematically studying all phases of computer-aided composition. Polyphony is a unified user interface that integrates interactive paper and electronic user interfaces for composing music. It supports fluid transitions between informal sketches and formal computer-based representations. We asked 12 composers to use Polyphony to compose an electronic accompaniment to a 20-second instrumental composition by Anton Webern. All successfully created a complete, original composition in an hour and found the task challenging but fun. The resulting dozen comparable snapshots of the composition process reveal how composers both adapt and appropriate tools in their own way.

We present paper substrates, interactive paper components that support the creation and manipulation of complex musical data. Substrates take different forms, from whole pages to movable strips, and contain or control typed data representations. We conducted participatory design sessions with five professional musicians with extensive experience with music creation tools. All generated innovative uses of paper substrates, manipulating their data, linking multiple representation layers and creating modular, reusable paper elements. The substrates reflect the structure of their computer-based data, but in a much more flexible and adaptable form. We use their prototypes to provide concrete examples of substrates, identify their roles, properties and functions. Finally, we explore their physical and interaction design with an interactive prototype.