Third-person piloting: Increasing situational awareness using a spatially coupled second drone

We propose Third-Person Piloting, a novel drone manipulation interface that increases situational awareness using an interactive third-person perspective from a second, spatially coupled drone. The pilot uses a controller with a manipu-latable miniature drone. Our algorithm understands the relationship between the pilot's eye position and the miniature drone and ensures that the same spatial relationship is maintained between the two real drones in the sky. This allows the pilot to obtain various third-person perspectives by changing the orientation of the miniature drone while maintaining standard primary drone control using the conventional controller. We design and implement a working prototype with programmable drones and propose several representative operation scenarios. We gather user feedback to obtain the initial insights of our interface design from novices, advanced beginners, and experts. Our result suggests that the interactive third-person perspective provided by the second drone offers sufficient potential for increasing situational awareness and supporting their primary drone operations.