Drone controller
This drone controller is easier to use than previous ones, especially for the inspection of wind turbines.Context:
Interface Design - 4th semester
Time period:
Mar 2022 - Jul 2022
Team:
Sarah Franke, Maurice Vater
Programms:
Figma, Protopie, Arduino
The inspection of wind turbines with drones has a lot of benefits. The downtime can be reduced to 1-2 hours and up to 40% more data can be generated. The inspection is carried out by a drone pilot and an engineer who analyses the live camera image.
Research
We started by analysing several drone and their controllers. According to those we created function mappings of the controllers.
Furthermore, we conducted three interviews. We noticed several problems, the main one being the many buttons that have several functions. Therefore, we decided to focus on a simpler control system.
Concept
We did several sketches and prototypes to figure out which shape is best. Once we decided on one, we created a functional prototype for the controller, the helmet screen and the tablet.
The one-handed controller allows the drone pilot to precisely manoeuvre the drone around and inside the wind turbine. The helmet's AR visor ensures that both the surroundings and the drone's camera image are in the field of vision.
During the inspection, the engineer can view the drone’s live image on a tablet. This means that the analysis can begin on site and photos or videos can be taken and damage can be marked.