Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 14, numbers 1 and 2, 2021 // View article


Building a Decision-Making System for Handling a Drone Operator's Emotional States Using a Brain-Computer Interface

Authors:
Diana Ramos
Gil Gonçalves
Ricardo Faria

Keywords: drone; Brain-Computer Interface; digital twin; Robot Operating System 2; drone swarms.

Abstract:
Drones enable humans to perform certain high-risk and attention operations and safety-critical tasks remotely, which are boosted by the use of Brain-Computer Interfaces. However, these technologies are correlated with the cognitive state of the operator, who is prone to stress and diversions, which brings instability to drone control. In this paper, we propose a decision making system aiming to decide, upon the operator's emotional state, whether the command should or should not be sent to the drone. By building a predictive operator's digital twin for cognitive emotional detection and by benefiting from a visual facial expression classifier, this system computes the coordinates and sends them to the drone through a Robot Operating System 2 client. Results show that both the digital twin and the facial expression classifier are capable of detecting emotions in a real-time setting and the system provides a reliable and secure way of commanding drones through the mind. Drone swarms could be integrated as this solution eases the addition of more ROS2 client nodes.

Pages: 121 to 130

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2021. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2021

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679