FlyingEyes realizes free-space camerawork and content creation using autonomous aerial vehicles. Recently, highly effective 3D-camerawork techniques have been developed for creating 3D-computer games, sports broadcasting, and special effects of motion pictures. For such purpose, wire or mechanically controlled camera systems are normally used, but because of their huge and expensive infrastructures, application area is still limited. Our proposed system consists of a computer-controlled quadcopter, an automatic human tracking system based on computer vision, and a user interface for suggesting camerawork. By receiving a general command from the operator. This system can also be used for other purposes, such as a flying sports assistant.

Flying Eyesは自律飛行ヘリコプターによる空中自由視点でのコンテンツ撮影を実現する．近年，クレーンカメラやワイヤー制御カメラにより，映画の特殊効果撮影やスポーツ中継などで自由度の高いカメラワークでの撮影が可能となった．しかし，これらは大規模な設備を必要とするため，限られた場面でしか利用することができない．小型無人ヘリコプターを撮影プラットフォームにすることで，より容易に利用できる空間的制約に縛られないカメラワークが実現可能になる．提案システムは，撮影用ヘリコプターと自律撮影機能，カメラワーク指示を出すためのユーザインタフェースから構成される．撮影対象である人間との位置関係を計測しながら追跡する無人ヘリコプターの自律飛行を実現し，撮影者がおおまかなカメラワークを指示することで自動的にカメラパスを計算する．本システムはスポーツアシスタントなどの応用にも利用可能である．

References

• Keita Higuchi, Yoshio Ishiguro and Jun Rekimoto, Flying Eyes: Free-Space Content Creation Using Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, CHI Extended Abstract, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2011. [pdf]
• Keita Higuchi, Tetsuro Shimada and Jun Rekimoto, Flying Sports Assistant: External Visual Imagery Representation for Sports Training, Augmented Human, Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan, 2011.

Flying Eyes BibTeX

@inproceedings{Higuchi:2011:CHI,
 author = {Higuchi, Keita and Ishiguro, Yoshio and Rekimoto, Jun},
 title = {Flying Eyes: Free-space Content Creation Using Autonomous Aerial Vehicles},
 booktitle = {CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
 series = {CHI EA '11},
 year = {2011},
 isbn = {978-1-4503-0268-5},
 location = {Vancouver, BC, Canada},
 pages = {561--570},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1979742.1979627},
 doi = {10.1145/1979742.1979627},
 acmid = {1979627},
 publisher = {ACM},
} 

Flying Sports Assistant BibTeX

@inproceedings{Higuchi:2011:FSA,
 author = {Higuchi, Keita and Shimada, Tetsuro and Rekimoto, Jun},
 title = {Flying Sports Assistant: External Visual Imagery Representation for Sports Training},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2Nd Augmented Human International Conference},
 series = {AH '11},
 year = {2011},
 isbn = {978-1-4503-0426-9},
 location = {Tokyo, Japan},
 pages = {7:1--7:4},
 articleno = {7},
 numpages = {4},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1959826.1959833},
 doi = {10.1145/1959826.1959833},
 acmid = {1959833},
 publisher = {ACM},
}