In a Flap: Experiences with a Bioinspired Flying Robot
Journal article, 2025
While the proliferation of civil drones has led to increasingly diverse designs, research on Human-Drone Interaction (HDI) has largely focused on rotorcraft, but interacting with flapping-wing drones remain underexplored. To address this gap, we present the first study to investigate how humans experience a bioinspired flapping-wing drone compared to a similar-sized quadcopter. We conducted a mixed-methods study (N = 56) using a within-subject 2×2×2 factorial design to examine the effects of drone design, proxemic distance, and human posture on perceptions of safety, pleasure, discomfort, and unexpectedness. Participants had mixed feelings about the bioinspired flapper, finding it newfangled, entertaining, and inspiring, but also unsafe and unclear in its potential use cases. They also associated the flapper with animals ranging from insects to birds to bats. Our findings have important implications for HDI and future bioinspired drone development, including scaling the drone's physical dimensions to its context and purpose, enhancing control and stability, and aligning its form with familiar species archetypes, which in turn should be guided by its context and role.
bioinspired robots
technology diversity
flapping-wing drone
Human-drone interaction
Author
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Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers)
University of Luxembourg
[Person a5ebc0fd-bc81-446c-bd46-4a1c24eb380b not found]
Vienna University of Technology
[Person bde92c58-80ac-49f2-8544-0196a670f378 not found]
Chalmers
[Person 8e93cde8-e5f0-41ac-b46e-06933ffda404 not found]
University of Gothenburg
[Person dfcbd004-96b0-4b32-87f4-de21dbb0480d not found]
Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Fluid Dynamics
[Person c5108ddc-0ace-41bb-898d-039b33243416 not found]
University of Luxembourg
[Person 055d9271-4f97-479b-bdda-f39a357aac2d not found]
Stanford University
[Person 57c543cd-4ee5-4f91-beb9-a29b83197e06 not found]
University of Bergen
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
24749567 (eISSN)
Vol. 9 3 1-20 138The Rise of Social Drones: A Constructive Research Agenda
Marianne och Marcus Wallenberg Foundation (M&MWallenbergsStiftelse), 2020-01-01 -- 2023-12-31.
Areas of Advance
Information and Communication Technology
Driving Forces
Sustainable development
Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Human Computer Interaction
DOI
10.1145/3749495