Beyond the FPV Camera
2026-06-15
Description
FPV drone flying creates an immersive connection between pilot and drone, but this connection is almost completely visual. The pilot sees through the drone’s camera, while the body remains physically separated from the drone and its surroundings. FPV flying relies strongly on direct camera-based control, fast visual processing, and pilot skill (Pfeiffer & Scaramuzza, 2021; Tezza & Andujar, 2022). This makes nearby obstacles, side movement, and rear proximity difficult to feel or understand naturally.
In this Final Bachelor Project, I explored how additional feedback could make spatial information around the drone easier to perceive. Instead of designing an automated obstacle-avoidance system, the project focuses on keeping the pilot in control while making hidden spatial information more understandable. This direction was important because automation can influence the user’s sense of control and reduce the operator’s direct control authority in shared-control systems (Berberian et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2021).
I developed and compared three feedback directions: haptic feedback through vibration around the head, audio feedback through directional beeps, and visual feedback inside the FPV view. These modalities were chosen because augmented visual, auditory, and haptic feedback can each influence perception, motor performance, and learning in different ways (Sigrist et al., 2013). The feedback methods were tested in a Unity-based simulation with FPV goggles, where participants interpreted the movement of a simulated object through each modality.
The project resulted in a working demonstrator and a benchmark comparison between the three modalities. Visual feedback performed strongest in the current setup, while haptic feedback was experienced as natural and promising but needs further ergonomic refinement. The final direction suggests that a combination of visual feedback with haptic (possibly audio too) cues could make FPV flying feel more spatially aware without removing pilot agency.
Project Video
References
Berberian, B., Sarrazin, J.-C., Le Blaye, P., & Haggard, P. (2012).
Automation technology and sense of control: A window on human
agency. PLOS ONE, 7(3), Article e34075.
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034075
Pfeiffer, C., & Scaramuzza, D. (2021). Human-piloted drone racing:
Visual processing and control. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters,
6(2), 3467–3474. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2103.04672
Sigrist, R., Rauter, G., Riener, R., & Wolf, P. (2013). Augmented visual,
auditory, haptic, and multimodal feedback in motor learning: A review.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 21–53.
doi.org/10.3758/s13423-012-0333-8
Tezza, D., & Andujar, M. (2022). First-person view drones and the FPV
pilot user experience. In S. Yamamoto & H. Mori (Eds.), Human
interface and the management of information: Applications in complex
technological environments (pp. 404–417). Springer.
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06509-5_28
Zhang, D., Tron, R., & Khurshid, R. P. (2021). Haptic feedback improves
human-robot agreement and user satisfaction in shared-autonomy
teleoperation. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA) (pp. 3306–3312). IEEE.
doi.org/10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9560991