Human-drone-interaction: A case study to investigate the relation between autonomy and user experience

Abstract

Autonomous robots effectively support the human workforce in a variety of industries such as logistics or health care. With an increasing level of system autonomy humans normally have to give up control and rely on the system to react appropriately. We wanted to investigate the effects of different levels of autonomy on the User Experience (UX) and ran a case study involving autonomous flying drones. In a student competition, four teams developed four drone prototypes with varying levels of autonomy. We evaluated the resulting UX in 24 semi-structured interviews in a setting with high perceived workload (competition, autonomous vs. manual) and a non-competition setting (autonomous). The case study showed that the level of autonomy has various influences on UX, particularly in situations with high perceived workload. Based on our findings, we derive recommendations for the UX-oriented development of autonomous drones.