Autonomous Execution of Cinematographic Shots with Multiple Drones

Abstract

This paper presents a system for the execution of autonomous cinematography missions with a team of drones. The system allows media directors to design missions involving different types of shots with one or multiple cameras, running sequentially or concurrently. We introduce the complete architecture, which includes components for mission design, planning and execution. Then, we focus on the components related to autonomous mission execution. First, we propose a novel parametric description for shots, considering different types of camera motion and tracked targets; and we use it to implement a set of canonical shots. Second, for multi-drone shot execution, we propose distributed schedulers that activate different shot controllers on board the drones. Moreover, an event-based mechanism is used to synchronize shot execution among the drones and to account for inaccuracies during shot planning. Finally, we showcase the system with field experiments filming sport activities, including a real regatta event. We report on system integration and lessons learnt during our experimental campaigns.INDEX TERMS Autonomous cinematography, Multi-robot system, Unmanned aerial vehicles.

Optimal Trajectory Planning for Cinematography with Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…In this section, we present our system architecture, describing the different software components required for trajectory planning and their interconnection. Besides, we introduce briefly the overall architecture of our complete system for cinematography with multiple UAVs, which was presented in [33].…”

“…In our previous work [33], following recommendations from cinematography experts, we selected a series of canonical shot types for our autonomous multi-UAV system. Each shot has a type, a time duration and a set of geometric parameters that are used by the system to compute the desired camera position with respect to the target.…”

“…Even though our complete system [33] implements additional shots, such as static, elevator, orbit, etc., they follow similar behaviors or are not relevant for trajectory planning evaluation. Particularly, we distinguish between two groups of shots for assessing the performance of the trajectory planner: (i) shots where the relative distance between UAV and target is constant (e.g., chase, lead or lateral), denoted as Type I shots; and (ii) shots where this relative distance varies throughout the shot (e.g., flyby or orbit), denoted as Type II shots.…”