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Project Leader: Professor Luca Mottola and Dr Airi Lampinen
Official Project Website: https://www.dronearena.info/

Research Funding: Digital Futures Demonstrator Project The Digital Futures Drone Arena

Status: Complete

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Project Description

The Digital Futures Drone Arena was a concrete as well as a conceptual platform where key players in the digital transformation and society join in a conversation about the role and impact of mobile robotics, autonomous systems, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. The platform took the form of a novel aerial drone testbed, where drone competitions take place periodically to understand and explore the unfolding relationships between humans and drones.

The first challenge was staged as a three-day hack-a-thon. During this challenge, four teams of participants used their bodies to pilot a drone through an obstacle course designed as a three-dimensional version of the game Pac-Man. Supported by a team of expert technicians, each team had to program the drone to recognize the presence of their body and react to gestures that they made. They had to pass through as many virtual points in the obstacle course in the shortest amount of time to maximize their score.

During the second two-day challenge, four pairs of participants were invited to choreograph a dance performance with a drone which has been pre-programmed by the organizers to respond to the participants’ bodies with a sequence of movements. Each pair had one-and-a-half days to explore different ways of performing with the drone, again supported by a team of expert technicians. The pairs then performed their dance routines to a panel of judges. The judges awarded points based on the aesthetic creativity of the dancer.

We hope that providing platforms such as the Digital Futures Drone Arena can facilitate interdisciplinary discussions as well as public facing engagement with robotic technologies in society as well as their impact on society.