Pilot a Drone with Body Movement Instead of Twitchy Joysticks

Piloting a drone is difficult. Even cutting-edge drones, which have very effective on-board stabilizing sensors and firmware, are tricky. That mostly comes down to the sensitivity of traditional RC controller joysticks. They need to be sensitive enough to allow for fine adjustments, but still have enough range to strong acceleration. That means you can easily crash into a tree when your intention was just to gain a couple feet of altitude. That’s why researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland devised a novel way of piloting a drone with body movement.

The idea is that moving your body feels more natural for flying than moving small joysticks — a skill that takes time to develop. To find out which movements are the most natural, they started by tracking 17 people with infrared markers and a multi-camera setup. The test subjects were then outfitted with VR goggles and presented with an FPV view of a drone flying through simulated landscapes, and were instructed to move in a way that felt right for the flight.

When that data was analyzed, the researchers found common patterns in how people intuitively move when they’re “flying.” The data showed that only four of the original 19 infrared markers were necessary to track those movements, and that all of the markers could be placed on the subject’s torso. When compared with traditional joystick control, 39 test subjects were able to perform more precisely and reliably with the torso control. You may just be flying your next quadcopter by moving your body.