Adaptive Drone Flying

For Wounded Veterans, Adaptive Drone Flying is Proving Therapeutic

By Joseph Dorondo

In 2014, Wounded Eagle UAS (uncrewed aerial systems), or WEUAS, was formed with the mission of providing our wounded/ disabled Veterans with piloting instruction with aircraft commonly called “drones.” The program, (at no cost to these Veterans) has experienced tremendous success, engaging many students in learning to fly drones and ultimately pass the FAA Part 107 exam required to operate commercially in our national airspace.

THE "DART" PROGRAM

WEUAS also provides a “Drone Adaptive Recreational Therapy” or “DART” program, in which instructors first teach their students how to launch the aircraft into flight. As the student-pilots develop their skills, WE introduces them to a whole new experience: flying via an optical sensor or camera lens on the drone. This is called “first-person view,” or FPV.

The system includes an onscreen display (OSD) giving a detailed data display of battery level, altitude, heading, distance from home, and positioning so that the pilot can fly the drone back. Even more sophisticated systems include head tracking gimbals, where the camera follows the movement of the pilot’s head to provide the ability to look in all directions. For our students in wheelchairs, this capability converts that wheelchair into a pilot seat! This provides total immersion into the flight. Some might say it’s flying through augmented reality; others claim that “It’s like an out of body experience,” and that “This isn’t some video game, this is real world!”

Classroom training takes place at the retired historic Pensacola Amtrak Train Station. WEUAS provides FAA Part 107 dronestudy labs at this location. Flight training is conducted at the Escambia Model RC Park.

THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS TOO REAL TO BE OVERLOOKED

Over the many years that WEUAS has been training disabled Veterans to become commercial and recreational drone operators, they’ve discovered that this training provides an amazing therapeutic treatment. Operating drones can strengthen eye-hand coordination, spatial thinking, dexterity, muscle training and muscle memory, all while enhancing the ability to focus and concentrate, and thus increase attention span. Many of their students have mentioned how flying drones has become

something they not only enjoy becoming proficient at, it has also become a form of therapy for them.

As of now, the medical, vocational, and recreational therapy community seems unaware of the great potential value this has to our wounded and injured Veterans. It is a message WEUAS hopes to carry – that this training has the potential to increase the Veterans’ level of self-confidence, enhance their social skills, and even improve their employability!

While in the program, these Veterans mention how they look forward to coming out to the field and enjoy gaining more time with their flight-training exercises. In terms of powerful validation of what WEUAS is doing for them, this is it.

Injuries such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other neurological disorders and cognitive disabilities are complex issues. But how many professionals in the medical and psychological community have considered the satisfaction and therapeutic benefits of flying a drone along with FPV? Or the value of the joy felt while doing so? What could these experiences bring to their patients in treatment or evaluation?

Talk to pilots and they’ll tell you there is no other experience like flying a plane. They’ll all say some version of the same thing – that it’s “like soaring the wind-swept heights with easy grace up to where not even eagles fly.” Flying a drone equipped with FPV and a head-tracking camera transforms even a wheelchair into that same pilot seat! You’re in control, in command of your world … all the while reaping the benefits of an excellent course of therapy!