Blind and Low-vision (BLV) people face challenges in their daily lives, especially regarding independent navigation in unfamiliar settings. Assistive robots have recently emerged as assistive tools for people with special needs. Drones, in particular, have unique advantages over ground robots. Our work aims at designing a drone assistant in addition to primary mobility aids (i.e., white cane) to improve spatial awareness and navigation in unfamiliar settings. Using a Research-through-Design method with 21 BLV users, we identified challenging scenarios and the need for two distinct operating modes (Explorer and Team). We then deployed a low-fidelity prototype in a Wizard-of-Oz study. Participants were enthusiastic about the assistive drone. The outcomes were reviewed by low vision specialists and drone experts to critically assess the strengths and limitations of this assistive tool. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for future design of assistive drones tailored to BLV users.

Museums aim at personalizing visits to offer tailored content and encourage visitors to come back. Unfortunately, museum professionals find it difficult to reflect on the vast number of visitor profiles when creating personalized visits. We propose Museo* a new concept to support their creation strategy by allowing the selection of visitor characteristics. Through an interactive design process, we instantiated this concept with MuseoTUI, that displays the progress of visit creation by illuminating physical tokens, and MuseoGUI that displays on a standard touchscreen. In an in-situ comparative structured observation, we evaluated both prototypes. The concept Museo* is well understood and accepted with both interaction styles. MuseoGUI was perceived as more efficient, while MuseoTUI provided better stimulation, higher user experience and the physical manipulation was described as a valuable support for empathy, reflection, and creation. Based on these findings, we present design implications for future systems supporting the creation of personalized visits.

Ensuring the safety of personnel at large industrial sites is a significant challenge. Misunderstandings and increased safety risks are related to communication, as traditional non-targeted alerts like sirens are often ineffective. To address this, we propose a drone-based system that uses voice interaction to deliver timely and targeted safety advisories. This paper presents a multi-stage, user-centered study, beginning with formative interviews with security and safety managers and culminating in an on-site evaluative study with personnel at two biomass power plants. Through our study, we identify key design insights for creating a drone that is perceived as an official, authoritative, and non-threatening entity. We provide design guidance for using sound and movement to signal intent, creating a voice persona that balances authority with clarity, and designing interaction flows to manage confusion and non-compliance. The results demonstrate the system's potential not only to enhance safety compliance, but also to mitigate interpersonal confrontation. First, we provide an empirically-grounded understanding of contextual safety challenges, which informs a set of design principles for intelligible and socially acceptable voice advisories from drones. Second, we present results from an in-situ evaluation of a working prototype that demonstrates its effectiveness in a real-world setting.

Figure 1: Current status and future vision of drone-assisted firefighting in Thailand: enhancing situational awareness, resource management, and decision-making in forest and industrial fire emergencies.

This study investigates the mitigation of cognitive flexibility decrements during long-endurance Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) missions through visual alerts. UAS mishaps are likely partially attributable to decreased cognitive flexibility caused by mental fatigue. Two groups of participants performed a 2-hour UAS simulation. One group was supported by visual alerts when switching between tasks, while the other was not. To further investigate the effect of visual alerts, the participant’s cerebral and cardiac activity during the task was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG). Results showed a weaker subjective increase of mental fatigue across time with visual alerts than the control group. Furthermore, behavioural results showed improved reaction time and accuracy in some performance metrics. Future work may improve this system’s efficacy by implementing it with an adaptive interface.

Mental fatigue from continuous operations without breaks represents a safety issue for military drone operations, as these systems are complex and operate during long shifts. Military operations are hard to study due to their sensitive nature. The open-access program UASOS serves as a testbed to examine the effects of mental fatigue in an ecologically valid environment. UASOS recreates fundamental aspects of military drone operations in a controllable environment that is easy enough for novices to understand but demanding enough to elicit mental fatigue. Participants alternate between navigating a drone-using either a trackball/mouse or a joystick-and searching for visual targets. The protocol is set up in a way that taxes the cognitive flexibility of participants by constantly requiring them to alternate between tasks. In addition, several parameters such as difficulty, duration, questionnaires, training phases, and more can be adapted. The task also allows for synchronization with physiological data using LabStreamingLayer. Implemented in python, the code is set up to be easily installed.

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.

Board games allow us to share collective entertainment experiences. They entertain because of the interactions between players, physical manipulation of tokens and decision making. Unfortunately, most board games exclude people with visual impairments as they were not initially designed for players with special needs. Through a user-centered design process with an accessible game library and visually impaired players, we observed challenges and solutions in making existing board games accessible through handcrafted solutions (tactile stickers, braille labels, etc.). In a second step, we used Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR), to make existing board games inclusive by adding interactivity (GameARt). In a case study with an existing board game considered as not accessible (Jamaica), we designed an interactive SAR version with touch detection (JamaicAR). We evaluated this prototype in a user study with 5 groups of 3 players each, including sighted, low vision and blind players. All players, independent of visual status, were able to play the Augmented Reality game. Moreover, the game was rated positively by all players regarding attractiveness, play engrossment, enjoyment and social connectivity. Our work shows that Spatial Augmented Reality has the potential to make board games accessible to people with visual impairments when handcrafted adaptations fall short.

Museums aim at offering personalized visits to encourage visitors to visit more than once. Few approaches consider the specific skills of museum professionals when designing tools for this purpose. We conducted a three-step iterative and user-centered design process with 13 museum professionals from six museums. This analysis led us to a main finding: the most complicated task for museum professionals is to explore their design space, composed of all possible visitor profiles for which to create visits. We propose a visualization for this multidimensional design space and six potential interactions on this representation. In an exploration space, we classify them on two axes: the selection approach and the type of interface (GUI versus TUI). We analyze their benefits and limits and, based on a pilot study, we propose insights and questions for future design.

Museums compete with the entertainment industry to attract a large audience. One solution to make them more attractive is to personalize the visits according to visitors' preferences. Following a user centered design approach with visitors and museum professionals, we designed and implemented Build Your Own Hercules. This tangible prototype helps groups of visitors or individuals choose a visit based on their characteristics and desires. A pilot study in the museum provided first insights about the ease of use, satisfaction and interest within visitor groups.

Interactive tactile graphics have shown a true potential for people with visual impairments, for instance for acquiring spatial knowledge. Until today, however, they are not well adopted in real-life settings (e.g. special education schools). One obstacle consists in the creation of these media, which requires specific skills, such as the use of vector-graphic software for drawing and inserting interactive zones, which is challenging for stakeholders (social workers, teachers, families of people with visual impairments, etc.). We explored how a Spatial Augmented Reality approach can enhance the creation of interactive tactile graphics by sighted users. We developed the system using a participatory design method. A user study showed that the augmented reality device allowed stakeholders (N=28) to create interactive tactile graphics more efficiently than with a regular vector-drawing software (baseline), independently of their technical background.

Recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of students with disabilities (SWDs) enrolled in universities. Unfortunately SWDs still struggle to attain the same level of education as non-disabled students. This paper presents a collaborative approach between members of the student support service, researchers and a special needs student in order to improve his access to and participation in university education. We performed a person-technology match and analyzed different existing technologies. Then, we designed and printed a keyguard, keyboard stand and mobile armrest which allowed him to almost double his text entry speed on a computer. We hope that our experience will inspire other universities to better address the needs of students with disabilities.

Current low-tech Orientation & Mobility (O&M) tools for visually impaired people, e.g. tactile maps, possess limitations. Interactive accessible maps have been developed to overcome these. However, most of them are limited to exploration of existing maps, and have remained in laboratories. Using a participatory design approach, we have worked closely with 15 visually impaired students and 3 O&M instructors over 6 months. We iteratively designed and developed an augmented reality map destined at use in O&M classes in special education centers. This prototype combines projection, audio output and use of tactile tokens, and thus allows both map exploration and construction by low vision and blind people. Our user study demonstrated that all students were able to successfully use the prototype, and showed a high user satisfaction. A second phase with 22 international special education teachers allowed us to gain more qualitative insights. This work shows that augmented reality has potential for improving the access to education for visually impaired people.

While popular digital maps support an unprecedented number of use cases, new reference map customization tools have been created for purposes for which those maps fall short. With the goal of informing the design of this new class of cartographic tools, we present the first study of naturalistic ("bespoke") map customization behavior. Through a mixed methods and mixed-media approach involving a survey, the analysis of a corpus of customized maps, and an interview with a power user, we find that bespoke map customization is a relatively common activity and identify frequent use cases as well as map customization strategies. We discuss these use cases and strategies in detail, and propose design implications for future customization tools, such as the use of templates for common use cases, adaptability for various customization styles and the support of multimedia interaction.

We report on the design process leading to the creation of MapSense, a multi-sensory interactive map for visually impaired children. We conducted a formative study in a specialized institute to understand children's educational needs, their context of care and their preferences regarding interactive technologies. The findings (1) outline the needs for tools and methods to help children to acquire spatial skills and (2) provide four design guidelines for educational assistive technologies. Based on these findings and an iterative process, we designed and deployed MapSense in the institute during two days. It enables collaborations between children with a broad range of impairments, proposes reflective and ludic scenarios and allows caretakers to customize it as they wish. A field experiment reveals that both children and caretakers considered the system successful and empowering.

Tactile relief maps are used by visually impaired people to acquire mental representation of space, but they retain important limitations (limited amount of information, braille text, etc.). Interactive maps may overcome these limitations. However, usability of these two types of maps has never been compared. It is then unknown whether interactive maps are equivalent or even better solutions than traditional raised-line maps. This study presents a comparison of usability of a classical raised-line map versus an interactive map composed of a multitouch screen, a raised-line overlay, and audio output. Both maps were tested by 24 blind participants. We measured usability as efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Our results show that replacing braille with simple audio-tactile interaction significantly improved efficiency and user satisfaction. Effectiveness was not related to the map type but depended on users’ characteristics as well as the category of assessed spatial knowledge. Long-term evaluation of acquired spatial information revealed that maps, whether interactive or not, are useful to build robust survey-type mental representations in blind users. Altogether, these results are encouraging as they show that interactive maps are a good solution for improving map exploration and cognitive mapping in visually impaired people.