Communicating with a drone may soon be as simple as a wave of the hand or change in your facial expression. That’s because researchers in the School of Computing Science’s Autonomy Lab are developing a way for drones to detect hand signals and facial expressions from their human operator. The research could have important applications in emergency scenarios such as search and rescue, or firefighting.

“We would like to get to the point where interacting with a robot is as easy as working with a co-worker or a trained animal,” says principal investigator and computing science professor, Richard Vaughan.

Learn about their drone interaction research in SFU News.