Drone Teleoperation Interfaces: Challenges and Opportunities with XR Integration

Drones are piloted remotely through teleoperation interfaces. These interfaces typically employ 2D displays, which can limit Situation Awareness (SA) due to narrow field-of-view (FoV) and lack of depth perception. Extended Reality (XR) has potential to enhance these systems by providing 3D environments that improve spatial understanding and expand FoV. However, designing drone teleoperation interfaces requires a thorough understanding of remote pilot’s SA needs and usability challenges to ensure safety and facilitate decision-making. This makes a user-centered design (UCD) approach essential. To this end, we present findings from qualitative interviews with (n=8) professional drone pilots, designed to (1) identify key challenges in current teleoperation interfaces, and based on these challenges, (2) provide an outlook on how XR could address these issues. This work aims to guide future research and design of XR-based teleoperation interfaces to improve SA and safety in drone operations.