Hey peeps,
So I've been playing around with drone videography lately, find it really hard to film stuff while controlling the camera gimbal to keep things i'm interested in frame.
Being a roboticist, I hacked together a working prototype that uses the video stream to track anything I want, using computer vision algorithms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJW9ReKU-0I&list=UUy6SYEB_Gk40j9NOy8RI5aQ
Currently, I have a video tracking software running on PC and control a gimbal to keep the region of interest I select in frame. I'm also planning to dev. an android/ipad app so that you can just multi-touch define a subject with 2 fingers.
Is anyone out there also be into something like this? Would love to hear your feedback!
Thanks in advanced
Replies
Actually I used an off the shelf stepper ptu I found in the lab, but yes brushless will be the next step. Right now i'm running it on an i7, but already looking to deploy it on an ARM board. I'm running at 100hz with decent tracking performance though, so it's not that intensive.
Another direction I'm hoping to go with this is to create a smart camera for hackers with tracking API and other goodies, but I'll have to see what people are ultimately interested in :)
Interesting use of the stepper unit. Always a fan of frankensteining stuff laying around - cool to see you executed it so well. ARM would be ideal for applications as well as some other things I think would be interesting to integrate. I'll send you a message. As for the the smart camera, that seems like a great idea for the hacker/DIY crowd, lots of open source tracking code out there but all seems mediocre or unable to deal with more complex tracking or simply too CPU intensive to use in anything portable - willing to help or test anyway I can or collaborate if you are interested.
Awesome. I sure there would be a large (and growing) demand for this. I would love to be able to use ROI to keep the camera facing a certain direction and then visual tracking to follow a specific subject. This would allow for one person to get shots that currently require a pilot and a camera operator working together simultaneously.
Thanks for the response! Yes that was definitely the intention. I am suck at flying and this would be pretty much the only way for me to get any reasonable footage. The intention is to democratize drone videography for casual users like me :)
Thanks!
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