Intuitive haptic controls for an RC foam airplane

36 Pages·2017·19.51 MB·English

DEGREE PROJECT IN TECHNOLOGY,
FIRST CYCLE, 15 CREDITS
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2017
Intuitive haptic controls for
an RC foam airplane
ANDREAS LINDBERG, AUGUST GROTH
KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT

Abstract
In this century robotics and control systems are
progressively advancing at a faster and faster pace.
Interesting topics in these advancements are how to
make controls easier to understand and how to im-
plement a faster learning curve for the user. In this
projectourgoalwastocreateanintuitivehapticcon-
trolled RC plane using an Arduino. This was accom-
plished by using a glove with a gyroscope to measure
the tilt of the hand and then using this information
to e�ectively steer the planes aileron angels and ulti-
mately control the planes direction without it being
too hard to maneuver. To control the speed of the
plane a potentiometer was installed further up the
glove on the same hand to easily be able to adjust
the speed.
For the experiments the airplane was hung in
a test rig to prevent crashes. Then volunteers com-
pleted a predetermined set of tasks and the time to
complete the tasks was measured. The result was
to use the hand motion to control how the airplane
moved. The tests were executed by having two test
groups, one with and one without instruction, and
comparing the results. Finally using an anonymous
survey the testers user experience were measured.
Referat
Intuitiv haptisk styrning av RC
skumplan
Under detta ˚arhundrade tutvecklas robotteknik och
styrsystem fortlo¨pande i snabbare och snabbare takt. En
av de mer intressanta ¨amnenai dessa framsteg ¨arh ur
man go¨r kontroller la¨ttare att fo¨rst˚a och hur man
implementerar en snabbare inla¨rningskurva fo¨r
anva¨ndaren. I detta projekt var v˚artm ˚aal tt skapa ett
inutiuitivt haptiskt styrt RC-plan med hja¨lp av en
Arduino. Detta uppn˚addes genom att anva¨nda en
handske med en IMU fo¨r att m¨ata vinkeln p˚ah anden och
sedan anva¨nda denna information fo¨r att e�ektivt styra
planets vinkel p˚as kevrodrarna och slutgiltligen styra
planets riktning utan att det blir alltfo¨r sv˚art att
mano¨vrera. Fo¨r att styra planetens hastighet in-
stallerades en potentiometer ho¨gre upp p˚ah andsken p˚a
samma hand fo¨r att la¨tt kunna justera hastighe-ten.
Under experimenten ha¨ngdes flygplanet i en testrigg fo¨r
att fo¨rhindra kraschar. Da¨refter fullbordade test-personer
en fo¨rutbesta¨md uppsa¨ttning uppgifter da¨r tiden fo¨r att
slutfo¨ra alla uppgifter m¨attes. Resulta-tet blev att
anva¨nda handro¨relsen fo¨r att styra hur flygplanet ro¨r sig.
Testet utfo¨rdes genom att ha tv˚at estgrupper, en med och
en utan instruktioner och ja¨mfo¨ra resultaten. Slutligen
gjordes en anonym un-ders¨oknin gfo¨r att m¨ata testarnas
anva¨ndarupplevelse.
Acknowledgements
We would like to to thank our supervisor Didem Gu¨rdu¨r, who supported
and helped us throughout this project. A huge thank you also goes out to
the volunteers who participated in our experiment. Finally we would like to
thank our friends at KTH in Stockholm who helped us out.
Andreas Lindberg & August Groth
May 2017
Contents
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 Theory 5
2.1 Theory of haptics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 User experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3 Demonstrator 7
3.1 Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.1 Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Electronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.1 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.2 Arduino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.3 Voltage regulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.4 DC-motor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3 Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3.1 Controlling an airplane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3.2 The airplanes body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3.3 The ailerons and elevators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3.4 The glove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4 Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5 Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 Discussion and conclusions 13
4.1 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5 Recommendations and future work 17
5.1 Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Bibliography 19
A - Arduino code 21
B - Pictures 25
Abbreviations
In this section the abbreviations used in the paper is explained.
RC remote controlled
mm millimeter
IMU Inertial Measurment Unit
KB kiloByte
mA milliAmpere
DC Direct Current
Chapter 1
Introduction
Haptic technology is technology relating to the sense of touch [1].We think
that haptic technology or as it is also know as kinesthetic communication
technology is a fascinating science. To remove the button pressing of a con-
troller and using the motion of the human body to control is both an amusing
and a terrifying thought. It could also be the future of controlling for example
your TV or your lawnmower.
1.1 Background
Technologywhichinvolvesthesensesiscalledhaptictechnologyandissteadily
progressing presently[2]. In this age developers is steadily trying to make
things easier to use so it may be more accessible to the public [3] . Controllers
are one area in which this is very noticeable where the creator wants it to be
apparent how to maneuver the interface or vehicle [3] . In this project the aim
is to make an easy to fly, intuitive controller using haptic commands for an
RC plane . There have been instances where haptic controls have been used to
control di�erent vehicles. Nevertheless no report researching the possibilities
of controlling the direction of a remote controlled (RC) plane by the tilt of
your hand was found when searching various academical search engines such
as Google scholar or DiVA.
1.2 Purpose
ThepurposeofthisprojectwhichispartofaBachelor’sthesisinmechatronics
at KTH in Stockholm, is to build an RC plane controlled by a glove with a
1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
gyroscope tracking the tilt of your hand, and then using this information to
control the planes direction. The research question to be answered are:
• How can a easy to fly, intuitive controller using haptic commands be
built?
• How can the intuitiveness of haptic controls be measured?
• How does the user experience the controls?
1.3 Scope
As this project had a strict time limit and a strict budget the constraint for
this project were set as followed.
• The RC plane is to be test flown within a test rig so that the people
testing it wont crash the plane.
• The test group flying the plane will be of the smaller scale and therefore
the results may not be depicted with high accuracy.
• The RC plane will have a handle controlling the velocity and hence that,
the speed controller will not be constructed to be of haptic nature. This
is to save time. But could be done with for example tightening the fist.
• The results will be for a specific design of RC plane and it might di�er
with another design.
1.4 Method
To answer our research questions in Section 1.2 a prototype had to be created,
both the airplane and the glove. The airplane body was created using 10 mm
foam sheets which was cut out with a laser cutter. The electronic components
were then tested separately to see if they were functioning as intended and
then added on to the plane.
The glove was constructed in a similar fashion, adding the electronic
components one at a time while making sure it was working properly. The
tilt was registered by the Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU) on the glove and
the signal was sent to the Arduino. There it is translated to a degree which
is sent to servo, turning the ailerons.
2