Motion tracking drone for extreme sports filming

• Main Authors: Iastrebov, Viatcheslav, Wong, Choon Yue, Pang, Wee Ching, Seet, Gerald
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering; GPS Localization; Infrared Beacon Tracking Localization
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138183
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The support of major sporting events invariably necessitates funding from television, news and event coverage. Whilst traditional football, tennis or golfing events may be covered by a semi- stationary cameraman on foot, sports events in larger or inaccessible venues makes video coverage difficult and expensive. Our attempt aims to evaluate the gambit of sporting events to realize a cost effective solution to providing semi-automated video coverage. While technology using the global positioning system may be useful to locate a person within a large area, it is not sufficiently effective to provide a stable mobile camera platform in the targeted applications. Our goal is to deploy an autonomous UAV near the target within the accuracy of GPS and localize it with a secondary beacon for tracking an athlete. We consider the use of radio frequency and infrared beacons to orient the flying camera towards the target. The athlete wears these beacons on his clothing or has them installed on his vehicle. A framework for a UAV-based motion-tracking system using GPS localization which is augmented with beacon tracking is proposed. Our review of the literature suggests that the use of infrared beacons is more suited than beacons using radio frequency due to size and weight concerns.