Generic Drone Control Platform for Autonomous Capture of Cinema Scenes

TL;DR

This paper presents an autonomous drone control system for cinema scene capture, integrating a high-level API, a coupled drone model, and cinematographic path planning to improve filming efficiency and quality.

Contribution

It introduces a generic control architecture and automatic path planning tailored for cinematic drone filming, enhancing automation and versatility in movie production.

Findings

Successful demonstration through experiments

Improved automation in drone cinematography

Versatile control architecture for various UAVs

Abstract

The movie industry has been using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as a new tool to produce more and more complex and aesthetic camera shots. However, the shooting process currently rely on manual control of the drones which makes it difficult and sometimes inconvenient to work with. In this paper we address the lack of autonomous system to operate generic rotary-wing drones for shooting purposes. We propose a global control architecture based on a high-level generic API used by many UAV. Our solution integrates a compound and coupled model of a generic rotary-wing drone and a Full State Feedback strategy. To address the specific task of capturing cinema scenes, we combine the control architecture with an automatic camera path planning approach that encompasses cinematographic techniques. The possibilities offered by our system are demonstrated through a series of experiments.