Autonomous Execution of Cinematographic Shots with Multiple Drones

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive system enabling autonomous execution of complex cinematographic shots using multiple drones, including shot planning, scheduling, synchronization, and real-world testing in sports filming scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel architecture with parametric shot descriptions, distributed schedulers, and synchronization mechanisms for multi-drone autonomous cinematography.

Findings

Successful field experiments filming sports events

Effective synchronization among multiple drones during shots

Insights into system integration and operational lessons learned

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.