Akash Chaudhary

Harnessing human movements to command an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) holds the potential to revolutionize their deployment, rendering it more intuitive and user-centric. In this research, we introduce a novel methodology adept at classifying three-dimensional human actions, leveraging them to coordinate on-field with a UAV. Utilizing a stereo camera, we derive both RGB and depth data, subsequently extracting three-dimensional human poses from the continuous video feed. This data is then processed through our proposed k-nearest neighbour classifier, the results of which dictate the behaviour of the UAV. It also includes mechanisms ensuring the robot perpetually maintains the human within its visual purview, adeptly tracking user movements. We subjected our approach to rigorous testing involving multiple tests with real robots. The ensuing results, coupled with comprehensive analysis, underscore the efficacy and inherent advantages of our proposed methodology.

The intuitive control of robot swarms becomes crucial when humans are working in close proximity with the swarm in unknown environments. In such operations, it is necessary to maintain the autonomy of the swarm while giving the human operator enough means to influence the decision-making process of the robots. This paper presents a human-swarm interaction approach using full-body action recognition to control an autonomous flock of unmanned aerial vehicles. We estimate the full-body pose of the human operator and use a k-nearest neighbor algorithm to classify the action made by the humans. Finally, the swarm uses the identified action to decide its goal direction. We demonstrate the practicality of our approach with a multi-stage experimental setup to evaluate the prediction accuracy and robustness of the system.