Public Opinion About the Benefit, Risk, and Acceptance of Aerial Manipulation Systems

Aerial manipulation systems are an emerging subclass of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”) that use a mobile arm to manipulate their environment. Public opinion is an important consideration for drones, but past public opinion polls have focused on drones without attached arms and have relied on text-based surveys. Study 1 (N = 190) assessed participants’ perceived benefit, risk, and acceptance of aerial manipulation systems across five applications, using an animation-based online public opinion survey. Study 2 (N = 194) assessed the influence of stimulus sampling on public opinion of aerial manipulation systems by replicating Study 1 using an alternative set of animations. Study 3 (N = 396) assessed the influence of using animations versus a text control on perceptions of the poll and aerial manipulation systems, as well as the influence of survey platform (YouGov Direct versus Mechanical Turk). Results show that delivery applications are perceived as more beneficial than several other applications; that people’s opinions and imagining of drones were different if they watched animations versus read text; and that stimulus and population sampling influence the results of public opinion polls about drones.