In a Flap: Experiences with a Bioinspired Flying Robot
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 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

Författare

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Chalmers, Data- och informationsteknik

Université du Luxembourg

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Technische Universität Wien

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Chalmers

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Göteborgs universitet

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Chalmers, Mekanik och maritima vetenskaper, Strömningslära

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Université du Luxembourg

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Stanford University

[Person 57c543cd-4ee5-4f91-beb9-a29b83197e06 not found]

Universitetet i Bergen

Chalmers, Data- och informationsteknik, Interaktionsdesign och Software Engineering

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

24749567 (eISSN)

Vol. 9 3 1-20 138

The Rise of Social Drones: A Constructive Research Agenda

Marianne och Marcus Wallenberg Stiftelse (M&MWallenbergsStiftelse), 2020-01-01 -- 2023-12-31.

Styrkeområden

Informations- och kommunikationsteknik

Drivkrafter

Hållbar utveckling

Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2025)

Människa-datorinteraktion (interaktionsdesign)

DOI

10.1145/3749495

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2025-09-29