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This paper introduces a novel concept of visual-haptic display for situational awareness improvement for crowded and low altitude airspace situations. The visual augmentation display that constitutes of Virtual Fences delimiting no-fly zones, and a specific tri-dimensional highlight graphics that enhances visibility of other remotely piloted or autonomous agents, as well as conventional manned aircraft operating in the area is presented first. Then the Shared Control paradigm and the Haptic Force generation mechanism, based on a Proportional-Derivative-like controller applied to repulsive forces generated by the Virtual Fences and other UAVs are introduced and discussed. Simulations with 26 pilots were performed in a photo-realistic synthetic environment showing that the combined use of Visual-haptic feedback outperforms the Visual Display only in helping the pilot keeping a safe distance from no-fly zones and other vehicles.

This paper shows a preliminary experimental evaluation of a novel haptic aiding for Remotely Piloted Vehicles. The aerodynamically-inspired haptic feedback law was named Conventional Aircraft Artificial Feel, and was implemented as a variable stiffness spring. The experimental set-up comprises a fully nonlinear mathematical model of the aircraft, a visual display and a haptic device (a 3 DoF Omega Device). The tests, performed using a set of 18 naïve subjects, show the validity of the proposed approach.