Human-Centered Drone LED Illumination System: A Proof-of-Concept Prototype

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in drone usage in both commercial and personal use, due to recent changes in guidelines by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In those guidelines, however, there seems to be very few requirements in terms of illumination requirements, apart from the need to use a visible strob ing anti-collision light for nighttime operations. Hence in this study, wereviewed existing LED illumination systems in off-the-shelf drones to determine what type of configurations they have and how is the LED illumination system generally used. We also introduced a customizable LED illumination system and tested it in a human in the loop study. Our p reliminary findings have revealed that the colors that are preferred by the participants did not match the most used colors in existing LED illumination systems in most off-the-shelf drones. We also observed a possible relationship between the color preferred and the weather conditions.