Human Aerial Robot Interaction

One of the primary goals of robots is to provide physical support and increase mental and physical relaxation of humans performing complex and burdensome tasks. In many physical interaction applications, the high complexity of the task and the high unstructured nature of the environments require the robotic systems to operate in tight collaboration with humans.

However, the field of human-aerial robot interaction is still mostly unexplored due to the high risk that aerial vehicles might represent for humans. So far, the aerial robotic community focused almost exclusively on the remote control (with and without haptic feedback) of aerial vehicles in contact-free flight, for visual inspection and surveillance. My objective is to study the novel and still unexplored research field of physical Human-Aerial Robot Interaction (pHARI).