Human Motion Capture Using a Drone

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel drone-based 3D human motion capture system that operates in diverse environments using only an onboard RGB camera, offering a flexible alternative to traditional marker-based systems.

Contribution

The work introduces a drone-mounted MoCap system with a new reconstruction algorithm and a dataset, enabling motion capture without markers in various settings.

Findings

System achieves accurate 3D human motion reconstruction

Uses fast varying viewpoints from drone for improved accuracy

Demonstrates applicability in outdoor and indoor environments

Abstract

Current motion capture (MoCap) systems generally require markers and multiple calibrated cameras, which can be used only in constrained environments. In this work we introduce a drone-based system for 3D human MoCap. The system only needs an autonomously flying drone with an on-board RGB camera and is usable in various indoor and outdoor environments. A reconstruction algorithm is developed to recover full-body motion from the video recorded by the drone. We argue that, besides the capability of tracking a moving subject, a flying drone also provides fast varying viewpoints, which is beneficial for motion reconstruction. We evaluate the accuracy of the proposed system using our new DroCap dataset and also demonstrate its applicability for MoCap in the wild using a consumer drone.