Background: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are becoming popular in both commerce and private usage. Behaviors of novice drone operators are critical to UAV flight safety.
Objectives: This study aims at discovering the perceived difficulty, flight information access frequency, and flight performance of novice drone operators.
Methods: Twenty adults without prior experience joined as human participants. After attending an onsite training, they operated a drone to perform three missions. The subjective rating of mission difficulty, frequency of flight information checked, and time to complete the mission were analysed.
Results: The results indicated significance of gender effects on the difficulty experienced by the novices. Females reported significantly higher difficulty ratings than males initially. This gender difference diminished later in their last mission. Frequency of flight information access was negatively correlated with the difficulty experienced by the operators. Operators who checked flight information more often had less difficulty in performing the flight missions.
Conclusions: There were gender effects in the perceived difficulty and flight information access in drone operations for novices. Such information is helpful in drone operator training and drone design considering drone operation safety.
Keywords: Drone ergonomics; gender effects; mission difficulty; unmanned aerial vehicle.