Use of Tactile Alerts in Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

Abstract

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has been proposed as a solution to congested roads in cities. We tested an early concept of operation for UAM, where participants flew a simulated vehicle along a freeway route to and from two locations in the San Francisco area. We found that novice participants were able to pilot our UAM vehicle when it deviated from an automated route and return it back on course. Our study also provided a demonstration of how tactile cues can be used in UAM vehicles as part of an alerting system. We found little difference between whether the tactile alerts were administered on the arms or thighs or whether they provided directional information or not. The lack of an effect of directionality can be due to the low workload for the scenarios we examined. Future works should examine the effectiveness of the alerts in more complex task environments. However, the findings from the present study show that a tactile alerting system is feasible and that participants rated it high in terms of usability and trustworthiness.