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The ground control station (GCS) is an important part of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which provides the facility for human control. In previous work, the authors developed an enhanced virtual reality GCS (VR-GCS) for airships. Here, the authors incorporated haptic gloves to control the aerial vehicle with the use of a virtual controller defined within the virtual environment.

The VR headset was connected to the haptics and the flight simulation tool. The VR headset was used to visualize basic flight simulation while the vehicle was controlled via the haptic gloves and a virtual controller defined in the virtual environment. Here, using the previous experience, the position and orientation data from the VR headset was sent to the FlightGear flight simulator (FGFS) via extensible markup language codes. This was used to drive the heads-up-display (HUD) as well within the VR headset. Then, the inputs from the pilot on the virtual controller were sent to the FGFS using an embedded code. To accurately simulate the final goal of deploying the haptic-based VR solution to monitor and pilot the airship in beyond visual line-of-sight scenarios, a VR application was developed using the Unity game engine. Finally, the integration of VR, haptics and FGFS was performed using another embedded code.

A test procedure was conducted with a similar rating technique based on the NASA TLX questionnaire that identifies the pilot’s spare mental capacity when completing an assigned task to assure the comfortability of the proposed haptics VR-HMD (HVR-HMD). Accordingly, 10 users participated in the test and a comparison has been made for the aircraft control using the physical remote control (RC) controller and the virtual one. The results from the repeated measures analysis of variance and Tukey’s honestly significant difference post hoc tests revealed significant differences in mental demand, physical demand, effort and frustration across the different simulation conditions. Notably, the HVR-HMD system significantly lowered workload and frustration levels compared to both the desktop and VR-HMD setups, underscoring its effectiveness as a training tool. Results from the NASA TLX questionnaire showed that the current iteration of the system is ideal for training amateur users to replace traditional RC controllers by using similar virtual systems in a safe and immersive environment.

Such an advanced portable system may increase the situational awareness of pilots and allow them to complete flights with the same data transmission procedures using virtual systems in simulation.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and its implication on improving the farming household food security status, their resilience and livelihood risk management of farmers.

This systematic review has followed procedures to accomplish the review, including literature searches, screening studies, data extraction, synthesis and presentation of the data.

Based on the result of the review, the determinants of CSA adoption can be categorized into five categories, including demographic factors (age, sex, family size, dependency ratio, education), economic factors (land size, household income, livestock ownership), institutional factors (extension services, training access, credit services, farm input, market distance), environmental factors (agroecology, change in precipitation, slope of land) and social factors (cooperatives membership, farmers perception). The result also shows that applying CSA practices has an indispensable role on increasing productivity, food security, income, building resilient livelihoods, minimizing production risk and alleviating poverty. This concluded CSA practice has a multidimensional role in the livelihood of agrarian population like Ethiopia, yet its adoption was constrained by several factors.

This review mainly emphasizes on the most commonly practiced CSA strategies that are examined by different scholars.