Incorporating Drone Into Mixed Reality for Enhanced Remote Collaboration: A User Study on Inspection Task

We present a novel Mixed Reality (MR) remote collaboration system that integrates a telepresence drone to overcome viewpoint limitations in previous approaches. Current remote collaboration systems often restrict remote users to the local user's perspective or a fixed viewpoint, which may reduce spatial awareness and collaboration effectiveness. Our proposed system enables a remote user wearing a VR headset to independently navigate the local environment through a drone while guiding a local AR headset user. The drone represents the remote user physically and virtually with an AR avatar. The system provides the remote user with a 3D reconstruction of the local environment, the local user's avatar, and real-time drone camera video to facilitate drone operation and collaboration. A user study comparing our drone-enhanced MR system with 2D video and 360-degree video MR systems during inspection tasks revealed that the telepresence drone significantly improved collaboration efficiency and enhanced users' social presence and spatial presence. However, the remote users perceived a higher workload. Our findings demonstrate the benefits of independent spatial navigation through drones in remote collaboration and offer insights for future drone-enhanced MR remote collaboration systems.