Indoor Drone Path Planning with Real/Virtual Obstacles by Mixed Reality

Defining the working space for robots has become crucial due to their increasing use in various applications. When robots, including drones, operate in indoor environments alongside humans, mixed reality offers a way to define the workspace and movement spaces of robots in 3D. Such spaces can contain real objects as well as virtual objects. Both kinds of objects need to be considered for a robot’s path planningIn this paper, we present how two different devices, an augmented reality capable handheld device and an extended/mixed reality headset, were used to define the 3d indoor movement spaces for a drone. We developed dedicated applications for each device. For the users, the applications provided visualization and interaction with the drone’s movement space. Users could dynamically position virtual obstacles within the drone’s actual movement area and adjust its path planning accordingly. We evaluated and compared how users experienced the different devices and how they managed to define and modify the drone’s movement space. Our research contributes to indoor drone navigation by integrating mixed reality, obstacle placement, and path planning.