Development a virtual reality mode simulation in order to control a drone using a wearable device in a 3d environment

• Autor(a) principal: Crespo, Christian Andrés Bustamante
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/3242
• topic: Simulation; 3D; UAV; VR; Bluetooth; BLE; Inertial Sensors; Elders; Well-being; Life quality. Virtual Environment; Wearable Devices; Real Time; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

The world population is aging, The quality life in elder people deteriorates with age, this is because of the sedentary lifestyle in which they live, consequently these countries must adapt much more rapidly to this aging. Therapy and Physical activity helps to improve health and well-being in the elders, bringing longevity and improves their life quality. The Technology has been used as a tool in various fields and there are some applications that have been developed to encourage sports through entertainment. Nintendo Wii and Kinect games had a positive impact on the overall well-being of the elderly, compared to a other group that played traditional board games. The life quality of the elderly is impaired by the lack of physical activity, entertainment and lack of memory use. This work aims to solve this problem with the implementation of a system that promotes physical activity through body movements, generate entertainment through the control of a drone in a virtual environment and promote memory through remembering movement patterns that is due perform to be able to control the virtual Drone correctly. This work makes use of wireless devices, wearable, light and with IMU sensors integrated in order to generate a body area network system that scans each arm movement and sends that information through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to a virtual environment and control an UAV (Unamed Aereal Vehicle) remotely. The proposed system includes a 3D simulator that uses VR glasses for an immersive visualization in a virtual world, 2 Raspberry Pi devices with Sense HAT board integrated as hand controls, these plates are equipped with an IMU sensor that is responsible for the arms movement monitoring. This proposal allows an interconnection of portable devices through wireless technology and combine them with immersive virtual environments to generate a system that emulates the control of a Drone in a simulated environment. In order to adapt the system and focus on older people, it is proposed to implement 2 visualization modes and 2 difficulty modes, the visualization modes determine the perspective in which the user looks at the environment while the user controls the Drone, The First perspective, is defined by a third person camera system, where the user is layers of watching the Drone while controlling it and the second mode corresponds to a first person camera system, where the user's eyes are in the same drone position, this mode allows appreciate the environment in a better way, but does not allow to visualize the UAV. In the performed tests, each user had his / her own preferences, some of them liked to use the simulator with first persona camera configuration and others with third person camera configuration. this way the system is designed to adapt to the visualization mode of each individual. With respect to the difficulty modes, the simulator offers the possibility to use the maneuver the drone through 2 mechanisms, in easy mode, where the user only needs to make 4 movements between both hands and the difficult mode where the user requires 6 movements between both hands in order to have a total drone control, this allows the user to develop cognitive skills (Eye-hand coordination) and improve physical and mental health, when using this system. Through the tests of latency, it is determined that the transmission of data through Bluetooth Low Energy is extremely fast which means that the movements of hands that the user performs become real motions of the Virtual Drone in real time. A real time simulator is a system that offers reaction times similar to reality, this determines the efficiency of the simulator when it is used as training before using a real Drone. Performed tests with older adults reveal an evolution of skills when using the system progressively in each of the different modes of use. The interest, the entertainment and the physical activity that the system promotes in the elderly, is enough to improve their quality of life by contributing in the reduction of the sedentary, promoting the physical activity and mental state. To achieve the implementation of this system we propose a parallel development of a native Android application that makes use of the same system of body area networks of sensors to maneuver a real dron (Phantom 4) using only the movement of hands, with the object of validate the functions and movements of the virtual drone based on the movements of the real dron under the same control mechanism.