Tai Chi contains meditative movements. These are slow, coordinated movements that help you become aware of bodily sensations, which creates a relaxed and focused state.

This human drone interaction experience uses the narrative of a floating lotus flower taken from a vine. The user learns that following the lotus with coordinated movements brings it under their control. Leading the “lotus” with slow movements keeps it under their control.

This work contributes towards design strategies for the facilitation of meditative movement using drones, ultimately contributing to human-drone interactions that go further than simply facilitating awareness of, but develop a person’s appreciation of bodily sensations that come from moving.

This research investigates how to design human-drone interactions for bodily awareness. Bodily awareness is noticing things like the position of the hands, the movement of the shoulders or the pace of breath. It is the cornerstone to many preventative and rehabilitative practices such as physical therapy and Tai Chi. To make this happen, we explore how drones look and how they interact with us, finding ways to highlight different parts of the body and prompt specific movements and aesthetic experiences.

More info: cafeciaojoe.com

Documentary

This is a documentary of the design process that ultimately led to a CHI Honorable Mention:

 

Publications

La Delfa, J., Baytas, M., Luke, E., Koder, B., Mueller, F. Designing Drone Chi. Designing Interactive Systems Conference. DIS 2020. Pictorial. ACM. 1-12.

La Delfa, J., Baytas, M.A., Patibanda, R., Ngari, H., Khot, R.A., Mueller, F. Drone Chi: Somaesthetic Human-Drone Interaction. CHI 2020. Long paper. ACM. BEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION.

Baytas, M., Funk, M., Ljungblad, S., Garcia, J., La Delfa, J., Mueller, F. iHDI 2020: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Human-Drone Interaction. CHI 2020 Workshop. ACM.

La Delfa, J., Wichtowski, O., Baytas, M., Khot, R., Mueller, F. Are Drones Meditative? CHI 2019. Interactivity. ACM. Video.

La Delfa, J., Jarvis, R., Khot, R., Mueller, F. Tai Chi In The Clouds: Using Micro UAVs To Support Tai Chi Practice. CHI PLAY 2018.Work-in-progress. ACM. Talk video.

Acknowledgements

We thank the UAV team at RMIT University for their support and everyone who helped with the video and the development as well as the design.