Drone Fleet Management

Research, UX Design, Dashboard, Surveilance

Project Timeframe: 2 Weeks

Project Aim

To design a custom and easy-to-use informative web-based experience for drone fleet operations that help drone pilots to manage drone fleets and collaborate with other security teams of the Louvre Museum Paris

Project Narrative

The Louvre Museum Team onboarded a team of Drone Pilots and collaborated with Sky High Drone systems to manage their Drone Surveillance System.

Sky High needs to design the User Experience for the Drone in a Box System(DiBs) for the drone pilots of the museum surveillance team.

Project
Flow

Goals and Tasks

User Requirements

Desk Research

Competitor Analysis

User Flow Maps

User Story

Lo-fi Sketches

Hi-fi Screens

Understand

Define

Ideate

Create

Jump to Screens

Understand

Desk Research

Drone in a Box System

Drone in a Box(DiaB) System is an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology that uses Drones that deploy and returns back to the station/ box/ landing pad for charging and data transfer etc.

Main Parts of DiaB System

1. The Drone

2. The Box Station/ Landing Shelter

3. The Computer Management System

DiaB System is cutting-edge technology and its applications have just scratched the surface. It finds application in the Military, Security & Surveillance, Space, Agriculture, Logistics, Utilities & Services, etc.

To better understand the context and DiaB System in Security and Surveillance, I researched existing surveillance systems, surveillance technologies (both new and old), and similar service providers.

Information is relayed to the ground control room in real-time and cross-referred with AI-CCTV through a pre-programmed system.

AI-CCTV systems are being used to reduce blind spots in core high-security areas along with motion sensors, thermal sensors,s, etc.

Coverage of large perimeter at building and site level leaves multiple blind spots that can be eliminated by multiple DiaB systems.

Competitor Analysis

I also looked into various drone fleet management services to gather insights on asset health management, scheduling, mission control, handoff, mission logs, etc.

The pilot requires both a real-time view and a 2D or hybrid layout view of the same.

Entering mission control data each time is a tiresome and frustrating task.

Fuel/ battery stats as climate-weather may cause problems during missions.

Lacking UX customization for more personalized designated spaces/ situations.

Technology Enabled Security System

I was able to map various levels of security aspects and their respective teams responsible for monitoring to get an understanding of the UX requirements better.

Crucial Aspects

Drones are seemingly complicated pieces of technology and generate a vast amount of data that needs to analyze. Drone pilots are also required to be hyper-aware of their flight environment while flying.

Drone

Battery

Weather

Mission

Imagery

Drones type and their health is a top priority. Any malfunction needs to be highlighted immediately. in the dashboard.

The battery health i.e. the charge amount, recording/ flight time remaining, cycles, etc. needs to be presented.

Weather condition, wind speed, flight zone, Air traffic control connections in some cases, etc. required.

Clear mission guidelines, mission path/ trajectory, mission logs, and handoffs should be smooth.

Misson live imagery feed and recording with high-level controls and camera precision should be seamless.

Define

Goals and Tasks

Based on the Secondary Data these Goals and Tasks of a Drone Fleet Management System have been identified.

Goals

Monitor suspicious movements and flag intruders.

Eliminate blind spots via mission planning.

Inform ground task force on any suspect/ intruder.

Tasks

Schedule a new drone flight mission.

Monitor drone live feed via multi-camera viewport.

Create a new mission map based on surveillance requests.

Save drone mission data to reuse it again and maintain log details.

User Requirements

Reliable System

Display accurate flight control and health data and information

Ability to customize flight missions and store data for future missions.

Priority suspect detection notification and real-time relay to on-ground security team.

Easy to Use

Simple and informative User Interface

Collaboration with other security teams of the museum

Mobile Application for on ground reconnaissance

Ideate

Assumptions

I started with creating possible flow(s) of the above-mentioned tasks and goals keeping easy to use and reliability parameters in mind.

Assumption 1: The user (drone pilot) is a trained professional so the onboarding experience of a new Drone Box into the system has not been taken into consideration.

Assumption 2: I am building a scenario where the drone pilot is performing day-to-day tasks on the Sky High platform considering all environmental, social, and technical caveats are well handled.

Assumption 3: The Drone Pilot team is working through a desktop system (not on the ground) and piloting the drones through physical hardware.

User Story

The Louvre Museum appointed a team of drone pilots to manage Drone Surveillance. Alexandre is the team lead who works parallel with the Museum's Security Team.

Natalie finished her training under Alexandre when Louvre Paris gave them this opportunity.

She is passionate about piloting Drones but they easily get overwhelmed by information overload on screen.

User Task Flow