Autonomous Camera Drones Can Now Film Like A Hollywood Director

Skydio was among the first firms to produce a flying drone with the ability to track, follow, and frame the action autonomously. However, the biggest problem is to keep them from crashing rather than aesthetics. With this in mind, a research team from Carnegie Mellon University are teaching camera drones to fly safely as well as capture the best footage they can.

The first and foremost job for a drone is to stay in mid-air and avoid obstacles like buildings and trees that can damage its propellers. A collision is not always a crash, with many drones landing safely with a propeller broken, but that could stop the machine from doing its job if it doesn’t get repaired at once.

Consequently, autonomous drones have the ability to keep a subject in the frame, but they compromise for safety, so the resulting footage may not be aesthetically pleasing or dramatic as we want.

Nevertheless, the researchers have developed the software to control a drone with upgrades like a LiDAR scanner that maps the terrain in three dimensions. They also train the drone with deep reinforcement learning. In a study, people were required to watch footage that a photo-realistic simulator generated by continuously altering the position and framing of the virtual camera that captured the scene. The test subjects evaluated and scored several scenes regarding how interesting or visually appealing they looked.

The researchers then used the study results to generate guidelines for the system of autonomous cameras so that it can position the camera intelligently based on the positions of obstacles and the actors, as well as adjust framing and recreate the sweeping movement fo the camera. All of these are for more compelling footage for viewers.

The most apparent application from this research is creating filmmaking tools more affordable and more accessible to allow everyone to produce a film without having to spend a pile of money. In addition, the system can also help automate other drone uses, which include search and rescue or remote inspections that require a pilot to be in control the whole time.