Quadrotor or blimp? Noise and appearance considerations in designing social aerial robot

Abstract

Aerial robots offer a novel HRI platform thanks to their flying capabilities. However, existing aerial robots are designed from functional point of view and do not take social factors such as noise and appearance issues into serious consideration. Compared to quadrotor (noisier but higher speed), we investigated whether blimp (quieter but slower speed) is a better platform for social aerial robot. We formed hypotheses based on findings from physiology and psychology studies and examined our ideas with responses collected from online survey and interaction experiment.