XR Drone Traffic Visualization: Hand Interaction Development and Usability Improvements

Kurzfassung

This six-month internship project aimed to further develop a previous extended Reality (XR) application that visualizes drone air traffic on 3D maps based on U-space concepts. The application uses Unreal Engine and the Cesium plugin and is designed for the Meta Quest 3 headset. The earlier version relied on controller-based interaction, and this project focused on adding hand interaction and several new visualization features to improve situation awareness and usability. Users can now interact with the map in Augmented Reality (AR) using intuitive hand gestures, such as grabbing, zooming in and out, or rotating the map directly with their hands. Hand-based teleportation was also added in Virtual Reality (VR), making it easier and more natural to explore specific locations in the environment. In addition, new visualization features were implemented to help users better understand drone operations, including a first-person drone camera view and a Google Street View mode for inspecting areas more closely. Overall, the project extends the original system with more intuitive interaction and improved visual feedback, making it easier for users to explore geographical areas and analyze drone flight behavior.