Ergonomic Impact of Multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Noise in Warehouse Environments
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Ergonomic Impact of Multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Noise in Warehouse Environments Jesse Callanan1 Mostafa Nouh1
· Payam Ghassemi1 · James DiMartino1 · Maulikkumar Dhameliya1 · Christina Stocking1 · · Souma Chowdhury1
Received: 4 April 2019 / Accepted: 17 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Small multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are poised to revolutionize commercial and logistics sectors through their versatility, maneuverability, and rapidly increasing sophistication and decreasing costs. However, these robotic systems also produce a substantial and overpowering level of acoustic noise that can potentially distract or harm humans who are working in close proximity to these UAVs. The aim of this study is to investigate the acoustic signature of quadcopter UAVs under various operating conditions, and its impact on human communication and psychological well-being. A unique design of experiments is developed allowing efficient usage of space and reducing the number of sessions required to complete the experiment. The human study has been conducted with popular UAV platforms in a workshop environment. Participants completed various listening tasks and their scores were compared with the noise signature of the UAV to identify operating factors with significant impact on human hearing and perceived annoyance. Keywords Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) · Noise · Human subject · MANOVA
1 Introduction Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) promise to revolutionize inventory management and materials handling in warehouses and construction sites (a multi-billion-dollar market potential) [24]. Their unparalleled maneuverability and compact size make UAVs an attractive option for manufacturers and large logistics organizations which require numerous packages or other objects to be moved, tagged, inspected and organized at an increasing speed, with increasing precision, and in increasingly complex settings. However, the perceived noise (and safety) issues associated with small UAVs present an important barrier to delivering on their potential, especially considering that these applications often require UAVs to work in close proximity to human workers [4]. Such close proximity is part and parcel of other applications as well, such as surveillance and monitoring applications [7, 32, 33]. The sound field produced by small UAVs is extremely complex Souma Chowdhury
[email protected] 1
Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA
and their acoustic signature is arguably their most (and often first) noticeable characteristic. A few investigations of UAV acoustics exist [5, 14] in current literature. However there is a significant lack of information regarding the impact of UAV noise signature on humans. In this effort, we introduce the design and performance of a unique human subject study on UAV noise ergonomics, and present key findings resulting from the analysis of the experimental data. The remainder of this section briefly surveys the ex
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