DroneLight: Drone Draws in the Air using Long Exposure Light Painting and ML

TL;DR

DroneLight enables real-time gesture-based light painting with drones, allowing users to communicate or signal through midair patterns, with potential applications in entertainment, messaging, and rescue operations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel human-drone interaction system using gesture recognition and light painting, pioneering real-time drone-based messaging and rescue applications.

Findings

The ML model accurately predicts all input gestures.

The system successfully performs real-time light painting in midair.

Potential applications include messaging, entertainment, and rescue operations.

Abstract

We propose a novel human-drone interaction paradigm where a user directly interacts with a drone to light-paint predefined patterns or letters through hand gestures. The user wears a glove which is equipped with an IMU sensor to draw letters or patterns in the midair. The developed ML algorithm detects the drawn pattern and the drone light-paints each pattern in midair in the real time. The proposed classification model correctly predicts all of the input gestures. The DroneLight system can be applied in drone shows, advertisements, distant communication through text or pattern, rescue, and etc. To our knowledge, it would be the world's first human-centric robotic system that people can use to send messages based on light-painting over distant locations (drone-based instant messaging). Another unique application of the system would be the development of vision-driven rescue system that reads light-painting by person who is in distress and triggers rescue alarm.