IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023 - 66

Increasing Drone Safety Through Illumination
color on the perception of the drone, some might
argue the tasks of estimating the distance to be simplistic.
In addition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
we could not reach the participant numbers that
are comparable to other HDI studies24,25
As drones areproposedtobeusedindifferent
application areas, such asdelivery and construction,
different types of interactions will arise. In this context,
in our future studies, we would like to investigate
how illumination systems could make these
interactions more congruent and safe. Whether
these interactions are viewedpositivelybypotential
users and the general public is also an important element
toconsider. Inaddition, byverifyingour results
in a future studywith larger sample size and a higher
fidelity experiment, we plan to make recommendations
in terms of illumination configuration for regulatory
agencies anddronemanufacturers touse.
CONCLUSION
In this article, we introduce an IoT-based drone
system that is equipped with a configurable LED
illumination system. First, we give a brief overview
of existing IoT-based drone systems and their functionalities.
We then highlighted the need for incorporating
safety considerations and discussed the
requirements for building a safety conscious IoTbased
drone. We focused on three categories: the
necessary hardware requirements of adding a
safety feature to an existing off-the-shelf drone, in
our case a configurable LED strip, the power
requirements of said LED strip, and the mechanical
modifications that need to be done to accommodate
these changes. Then, we introduce our system
architecture and the prototype we built to validate
our system. The two tests that we have conducted
to evaluate our system, a power consumption test
to see if different colors consume different levels of
energy and a human factors assessment in which
we investigated the effect of illumination on the distance
perception of the drone were also presented.
Finally, we discuss some limitations of our system,
mainly stemming from the build of the drone itself
As drones will become more ubiquitous in the
near future, ensuring the safety of the drone, their
operators, and the general public, will become a
major concern for many stakeholders, especially in
urban environments. With this study, we hope to
highlight the importance of illumination in drone
66
safety and provide a framework for how to apply it.
However, this study only examines a relatively passive
interaction between humans and drones. Realworld
interactions will be morecomplex and designing
interactions that are appropriate for each scenario
is a significant challenge. In future studies, we
will explore how to utilize our illumination system
for HDI in drone applications and settings, such as
drone delivery, agriculture, andmanymore.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Nicola
Nomura with for her help in proofreading the
manuscript and Nil Yerebakan with her help in
developing the figures. This work was supported
by the National Science Foundation under Grant
2024656.
This work involved human subjects or animals
in its research. Approval of all ethical and
experimental procedures and protocols was granted
by University of Florida Institutional Review
Board under Application No. IRB202002748, and
performed in line with the Effects of Viewing
Angle, Proxemics, and Visuals Cues on Human
Drone Interaction.
&REFERENCES
1. K. L. Cook, " The silent force multiplier: The history and
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EASA Agency, " Civil drones (unmanned aircraft), "
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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/06/28/2016-15079/operation-and-certification-of-small-unmanned-aircraft-systems https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/06/28/2016-15079/operation-and-certification-of-small-unmanned-aircraft-systems https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/06/28/2016-15079/operation-and-certification-of-small-unmanned-aircraft-systems https://www.easa.europa.eu/domains/civil-drones https://www.easa.europa.eu/domains/civil-drones https://www.icao.int/safety/UA/Pages/ICAO-Model-UAS-Regulations.aspx https://www.icao.int/safety/UA/Pages/ICAO-Model-UAS-Regulations.aspx https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/by_the_numbers/ https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/by_the_numbers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254748/china-number-of-registered-drones/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254748/china-number-of-registered-drones/

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