How To Train Your Drone (HTTYD) is a novel, embodied human-drone interaction demonstration that enables an individual to shape the mapping between a drone and their own body. By demonstrating this system we aim to give conference attendees the opportunity to, not only shape their own interactions with a drone, but to experience being shaped by it. We hope this demonstration inspires researchers to build systems that allow for this kind of mutual shaping. We believe that supporting such interactions is vital to real world deployments of robots as they leverage embodied ways that people can understand robots, their environments, and the people around them.

We present mechanical sympathy as a generative design concept for cultivating somaesthetic relationships with machines and machine-like systems. We identify the qualities of mechanical sympathy using the design case of How to Train your Drone (HTTYD), a unique human-drone research product designed to explore the process by which people discover and co-create the somaesthetic potential of drones. We articulate the qualities – (i) machine-agency, (ii) oscillations, and (iii) aesthetic pursuits – by using descriptive and reflective accounts of our design strategies and of our co-creators engaging with the system. We also discuss how each quality can extend soma design research; conceptualizing of appreciative, temporal, and idiosyncratic relationships with machines that can complement technical learning and enrich human-machine interaction. Finally, we ground our concept in a similar selection of works from across the HCI community.

How To Train Your Drone is a novel human-drone interaction that demonstrates the generative potential of a design metaphor: the umwelt. We describe the concept of the umwelt and detail how we applied it to inform our soma design process, creating an interactive space where somatic understandings between human and drone could emerge. The system was deployed for a month into a shared household. We describe how three people explored and shaped the umwelts of their drones, leading to unique and intimate human-drone couplings. We discuss the compatibility of the umwelt to soma design practice and identify future avenues for research inspired by artificial life and evolutionary robotics. As our contribution, we illustrate how the umwelt as a design metaphor, can open up a generative new design space for human-drone interaction.

We report on the lessons we learned on programming human-drone interactions during a three-day challenge where five teams of drone novices each programmed a nanodrone to be piloted through an obstacle course using bodily movement. Center to the participants' learning process was the eventual shift from the deceptively simple idea of seamless human-drone interactions, to the reality of drones as non-predictable systems prone to crashes. This happened as participants had to first realize, then to deal with the limitations of the drone's resource-constrained hardware. Coping with these limitations was crucially complicated by the lack of appropriate programming abstractions, which led participants to focus on plenty of low-level, sometimes immaterial details, while losing focus on the ultimate objectives. We find concrete evidence of these observations in how participants handled the visibility problem in debugging drone behaviors, applied different defensive coding techniques, and altered their piloting practice. Our insights may inform further research efforts in drone programming, especially in the vastly uncharted territory of human-drone interactions.

In a long-term commitment to designing for the aesthetics of human–drone interactions, we have been troubled by the lack of tools for shaping and interactively feeling drone behaviours. By observing participants in a three-day drone challenge, we isolated components of drones that, if made transparent, could have helped participants better explore their aesthetic potential. Through a bricolage approach to analysing interviews, field notes, video recordings, and inspection of each team’s code, we describe how teams 1) shifted their efforts from aiming for seamless human–drone interaction, to seeing drones as fragile, wilful, and prone to crashes; 2) engaged with intimate, bodily interactions to more precisely probe, understand and define their drone’s capabilities; 3) adopted different workaround strategies, emphasising either training the drone or the pilot. We contribute an empirical account of constraints in shaping the potential aesthetics of drone behaviour, and discuss how programming environments could better support somaesthetic perception–action loops for design and programming purposes.

Moving with a drone can be a captivating and reflective experience. A drone can easily grab my attention, yet its hold is distinctly different to a screen where my body goes missing and my eyes are held captive. Instead, my body feels alive and present. As if every part of it is playing a crucial role in keeping the drone in the air. The sensors on my body enable the drone to be sensitive to my movements, which in turn increases my sensitivity to the drone's movements. It's like carrying a cup of hot tea with a book under your arm, any sudden movement from any part of your body affects the tea in the cup and vice versa.

In this thesis, I traced back through this experience and several other first-person experiences with machines to reflect on their constituent moments of sensing and acting. In doing so, I came to realise that these moments were fundamental to making meaning with machines, that is, how you come to understand its function and its purpose in your daily life. I used a combination of soma design and industrial design practice to draw from these first-person experiences and create three systems, Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Through the design of the first two systems, I attempted to distil the feeling of being a beginner tai chi student into a human-drone interaction. Subsequent user studies of these two systems demonstrated some degree of success, but it was the participants' own interpretations that sparked my curiosity and drove the creative process for the third system. I was fascinated by the tendency for participants to liken unfamiliar feelings to past experiences when faced with an ambiguous situation with a drone. This prompted me to reflect on the ambiguity that presented itself to me during the design process of Tai Chi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. There I found rich associations with my past experience racing go-karts and maintaining old cars. This culminated in the design of How to Train Your Drone, a more ambiguous human-drone interaction intended to support the participants’ own interpretations and allow their unique constellation of sensing and acting to drive the meaning making process.

The subsequent analysis of a month-long user study led me to describe the unique and tacit relationship that unfolds between a human and a drone as Mechanical Sympathy. Mechanical Sympathy is a process of sensing and acting that leads to a cumulative appreciation ofhuman-with-machine. It does not, in the reductive sense, mean being emotionally sympathetic towards a machine, but rather a synergy or bodily understanding between human and machine that shapes how they can act together. This process entails fostering an awareness of your capabilities, limitations, and changing body in relation to a machine and vice versa. It also allows you to craft your own experiences with a machine and explore how that machine, in turn, shapes your aesthetic preferences. Through this process, you can reflect on what kinds of human-machine experiences hold value and meaning.

Whilst analysing the interview data from How to Train Your Drone it became clear to me that the participants did not program the drones to perform some action as much as they shaped what the drone could and could not sense; how reality was presented to the drone. This was an important shift in perspective that led me to propose an expansion of the soma design program that considers designing interactive technology as less of a material to be mastered and more of an agent to evolve with — both for the designer and later for users. Central to this shift was the concept of the Umwelt, first introduced by Jakob von Uexküll which posits that we cannot know what it is like to be anything but human and therefore the realities of other beings are essentially unknowable. However, we can make meaning with them by paying attention, which, fittingly, is something that is required by both the soma design process and its resulting artefacts. Additionally, I looked to the fields of evolutionary robotics and human-robot interaction to bring structure to this expanded soma design program and situate it in the literature. Ultimately, I aimed to afford both the designer and the user novel ways to embrace ambiguity when interacting with machines by providing opportunities for aesthetic appreciation and meaning making. The thesis concludes with a speculative look at the challenges this approach to design faces in the context of daily life.

Att röra sig med en drönare kan vara en fängslande och reflekterande upplevelse. En drönare kan lätt fånga min uppmärksamhet, ändå fångar den mig på ett helt annorlunda sätt än en skärm, där min kropp försvinner och mina ögon är låsta. Istället, känns min kropp levande och närvarande. Som om varje del av den spelar en avgörande roll för att hålla drönaren i luften. Sensorerna på min kropp gör det möjligt för drönaren att vara känslig för mina rörelser, vilket i sin tur ökar min känslighet till drönarens rörelser. Det är som att bära en kopp hett te och samtidigt en bok under armen, alla plötsliga kroppsrörelser, oavsett kroppsdel, påverkar teet i koppen och vice versa.Jag spårade genom denna upplevelse och flera and första personsupplevelser med maskiner tillbaka för att reflektera över deras konstituerande stunder av att känna och utföra. Genom detta förstod jag att dessa stunder var fundamentala för att skapa mening tillsammans med en maskin, det vill säga, hur du förstår dess funktion och dess syfte i vardagen. Jag har använt en kombination av soma design och industridesignpraktik för att genom dessa första personupplevelse skapa tre system Tai Chi in the Clouds, Drone Chi and How to Train Your Drone. Genom de två första systemen försökte jag att förmedla känslan av att vara en nybörjar Tai Chi-student in i en människa-drönar interaktion. De följande användarstudierna av dess system visade en viss grad av framgång, men det var deltagarnas egna tolkningar som gjorde mig nyfiken och drev på den kreativa processen till ett tredje system. Jag blev fascinerad av deltagarnas tendens att likna de obekanta känslor de fick då de interagerade med drönarna med sina tidigare erfarenheter av att ha hamnat i en mångtydig situation. Detta fick mig att reflektera över mångtydigheten som blev tydlig för mig i designprocessen av TaiChi in the Clouds and Drone Chi. Där hittade jag rika associationer till min tidigare upplevelse av att tävla i go-kart och att underhålla gamla bilar. Detta kulminerade i designen av How to Train Your Drone, en mer mångtydig människa-drönar interaktion som syftar till att stötta deltagarnas egna tolkningar och låta deras egen unika konstellation av att känna av och agera driva skapandet av mening.

Analysen som följde en månadslång användarstudie ledde mig fram till att beskriva det unika och till karaktären underförstådda förhållande som utvecklar sig mellan an människa och en drönare som Mekanisk Sympati. Mekanisk sympati är en process av att känna av och agerande som leder till en kumulativ uppskattning av människa-med-maskin. Förenklat är det inte samma som att vara känslomässigt sympatiskt mot en maskin, utan snarare är det en synergi eller kroppslig förståelse mellan människa och maskin som formar hur de kan agera tillsammans. Denna process innebär att medvetandegöra sina egna förmågor, begränsningar och kropp i förändring i förhållande till en maskin och vice versa. Det tillåter också att du kan skapa dina egna upplevelser tillsammans med en maskin och utforskar hur den maskinen, å sin sida, skapar dina estetiska preferenser. Genom denna process kan du reflektera över vilka sorters människa-maskinupplevelser som innehåller värde och mening. Medan jag analyserade intervjudatat från How to Train Your Drone, blev det tydligt för mig att deltagarna inte programmerade drönarna att utföra särskilda handlingar lika mycket som de formade vad drönaren kunde och inte kunde känna av; hur verkligheten presenterade sig för drönaren. Detta var en viktig ändring av synvinkel, som ledde mig till att föreslå en vidgning av soma designprogrammet som tar i beaktning design av interaktivt material, mindre som ett material som ska behärskas utan mer som ett medel som man utvecklas med — både för designern och senare för användare. Centralt för denna ändring av synvinkel var Umwelts-konceptet, som först introducerades av Jacob von Uexkull, vilket tar ståndpunkten att vi inte kan veta hur det är att vara något annat än människor och därför är andra varelser verkligheter i grund och botten okända. Däremot så kan vi skapa mening med dem genom att vara uppmärksamma, vilket passande nog är något som krävs både i en soma designprocess och dess slutgiltiga artefakt. Dessutom har jag tittat närmare på fälten evolutionär robotik och människa-robotinteraktion för att strukturera detta utvidgade soma designprogram och placera det i litteraturen. Slutgiltigt, så syftade jag att till att tillhandahålla båda designern och användare med nya sätt att anamma mångtydighet vid interaktion med maskiner genom att tillhandahålla möjligheter till estetisk uppskattning och meningsskapande. Avhandlingen knyts ihop med en spekulativ syn på de utmaningar som denna designansats möter i vardagskontexten.    

Drone Chi is a Tai Chi-inspired human-drone interaction experience. As a design research project, Drone Chi is situated within somaesthetic interaction design, where a central topic is cultivating bodily and sensory appreciation to improve one’s quality of life. Drone Chi investigates the potential of autonomous micro-quadcopters as a design material for somaesthetic HCI. In this pictorial, through a quasi-chronological account of the design process, we articulate how the sensory experiences of Tai Chi were integrated into Drone Chi. Taking a slow and open-ended design research approach, we iteratively developed the project through somaesthetic, product design and engineering perspectives, drawing heavily on analogies and imagery for inspiration. This elevated the influence of the soma against narrow engineering parameters and usability requirements. This pictorial means to serve as a reflective resource for designers who are looking for synergies between their native discipline and someasthetic interaction design.

Somaesthetics—motivated by improving life quality via appreciation for bodily and sensory experiences—is increasingly influencing HCI designs. Investigating the potential of drones as a material for somaesthetic HCI, we designed Drone Chi: a Tai Chi-inspired close-range human-drone interaction experience. The design process for Drone Chi has been informed by the soma design approach and the Somaesthetic Appreciation concept from HCI literature. The artifact expands somaesthetic HCI by exemplifying dynamic and intimate somaesthetic interactions with a robotic design material, and body movements in expansive 3D space. To characterize the Drone Chi experience, we conducted an empirical study with 32 participants. Analysis of participant accounts revealed 4 themes that articulate different aspects of the experience: Looping Mental States, Environment, Agency vs. Control, and Physical Narratives. From these accounts and our craft knowledge, we derive 5 design implications to guide the development of movement-based close-range drone interactions.

Meditative movement involves regulating attention to the body whilst moving, to create a state of meditation. This can be difficult for beginners, we propose that drones can facilitate this as they can move with and give feedback to whole body movements. We present a demonstration that explores various ways drones could facilitate meditative movement by drawing attention to the body. We designed a two-handed control map for the drone that engages multiple parts of the body, a light foam casing to give the impression that the drone is floating and an onboard light which gives feedback to the speed of the movement. The user will experience both leading and following the drone to explore the interplay between mapping, form, feedback and instruction. The demonstration relates to an expansion of the attention regulation framework, which is used to inform the design of interactive meditative experiences and human-drone interactions.

Tai Chi uses smooth movement and a focussed state of mind to support mental and physical health. Tai Chi teachers use metaphoric imagery such as “wave hands like clouds” to help students integrate smooth movements with a focussed mind. Current interactive technologies applied to Tai Chi take a very literal approach, focussing on body position and centre of gravity. In contrast, "Tai Chi In The Clouds" is a system which uses micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as "clouds" to lead or follow the movements of the hands, giving live feedback on smoothness of movement via LEDs. We used UAVs to aid the experience of living out the metaphoric imagery used in Tai Chi. With our work we aim to contribute to new design language to support movement based, mind-body practices.