Jeonbuk National University Develops Wearable Interface for Non-Visual Drone Control

Researchers combine hand gestures and waist-worn vibrations to communicate drone commands and position without continuous visual monitoring

JEONBUK STATE, South Korea, Nov. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Operating a drone manually requires pilots to watch a screen while coordinating controls. This divides attention between the aircraft and its surroundings. Researchers are exploring ways to make drone operation more intuitive and less dependent on continuous visual monitoring. A wearable interface developed at Jeonbuk National University combines hand gestures for sending commands with abdominal vibrations that indicate the drone's position relative to the user.

A research team was led by Professor Kee-Ho Yu, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Republic of Korea, along with researcher Myeong-Ho Shin and Dr. Giancarlo Eder Guerra Padilla from the same institute. The team paired a sensor worn on the back of the hand with a belt containing 36 vibration motors. A computer interprets 12 gestures as drone commands. Drone telemetry is translated into vibration patterns indicating direction, relative height, and distance. The system was assessed through gesture-recognition tests, simulated flying, an indoor tactile-perception study, and two real-drone tasks. This paper was made available online on June 12, 2026, and was published in Volume 11, Issue 9 of the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

The gesture-recognition model identified gestures with 97.58% accuracy and a macro F1 score of 0.9773. In a simulated waypoint task involving 12 novice users, average completion time fell from 263 seconds in the first trial to 186 seconds in the fifth. In an indoor study, 12 participants completed 1,200 trials using the belt without visual guidance. They correctly identified direction, height, and distance together in 82.75% of trials, with an average response time of 3.1 seconds. Direction was recognized more reliably than distance, the most confusing cue.

"The aim was to connect the user's intention with clear information about the drone's position, rather than improving commands or feedback in isolation," said Prof. Yu. "The hand sensor lets the user issue commands through familiar movements, while the waist-worn device communicates spatial information through touch."

The team tested the integrated interface with a real drone. In point-to-point trials, one novice participant used the gesture controller with either visual or tactile-only feedback. Visual operation reached the target in all nine trials, averaging 31.4 seconds. Tactile-only operation succeeded in eight of nine trials and took an average of 45.1 seconds. In a separate task, the participant returned the drone to its target zone after all eight boundary exits while vision and hearing were blocked. The findings indicate feasibility, not field readiness; the real-drone evaluation involved only one participant.

"Touch-based feedback is promising, but the results also show where the system needs improvement, especially in communicating distance and reducing response delays," said Prof. Yu.

Overall, the interface offers a way to control a drone with gestures while sensing its relative position through touch. Potential future applications include infrastructure inspection, search-and-rescue support, and training, where operators may need to attend to their surroundings. These uses were not tested in the study. Larger studies in varied outdoor conditions are needed, alongside improvements to distance cues, response speed, comfort, and safety, before practical deployment can be assessed.

Reference
Title of original paper: Wearable Human–Drone Interface: Gesture-Based Control and Vibrotactile Spatial Awareness
Journal: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3703244

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SOURCE Jeonbuk National University