Hi Everyone,
Ever seen the series of Quadrotor videos posted online by the GRASP Lab? Or the piano playing UAV from ETH?
The real time tracking system (motion capture) used in this technology is developed by Vicon Motion Systems.
My name is Alex and I work for Vicon. We’re new to this community and very keen to hear your thoughts on how we can become more of an active member. Feel free to share your ideas. If there is technical information we can provide, or perhaps trial software please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Our T Series systems are the latest technology and can cost big dollars. What you might not know is we have developed a cost effective camera named the Bonita camera. It’s based on the same technology and software as our higher-end cameras, however is available at a more affordable price. A full Bonita system (suitable for UAV tracking) with software is available for under $20,000.
Happy to be involved in the community and look forward to more awesome vids!
Alex
Comments
Hi George - Vicon's sister company 2d3 is able to extract 3D information for a moving video camera. This is used in Visual FX all the time and is basically match moving. You don't need a Kinect just a video camera - however the image storage and processing is a hard problems to solve and you need lots of computing power. If you are interested I can ask one of my colleagues from 2d3 to follow up post explaining their technology further.
However I think what you asking is shown in the following video around 4:07 and towards the end of the video are a couple of examples.
Hi Luke - we are working on it. This is four cameras for facial motion capture. Hopefully this could be inside a cockpit soon. The logger is small enough for a UAV (wieght of 2 iPhones and battery) but the real time processing isn't there yet for UAV use.
http://www.dexigner.com/news/23611
The 2d3 link didn't embed for some reason so here it is again.
http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Managing-Imagery-on-UAVs-from-2
Thanks for all the questions; I was hoping for a lively discussion and I will do the best I can to answer them.
Chris - for a smaller 4-5 cameras system the split of hardware to software costing is probably 75%/25%. The reality is that we as a company probably spend more time (and money) developing our software than we do our hardware. However, these days it is very hard to justify selling software at its 'real' cost. Not to compare us to Apple but their OSX Lion is on sale for $29.99 I am sure that price doesn't get close to covering the development. As for open source I am not sure if anyone would benefit from our software without having the hardware. I guess that is a deeper conversation if there is any off the shelf hardware we could integrate with. The Kinect (or similar technology) is an idea for the future but I don't think it is accurate or fast enough just yet.
That being said our Tracker software installs with a 30 trial license and with our system emulator, some trial data and our Real Time SDK so if someone wanted to evaluate our software and see how it works I am sure we would be open to that.
Joe - as I mentioned I am new here and I guess you have a lot more experience about how this technology and research can be used. I know there is the 'bad guy' scenario but having a Real Time tracking system helps with part of the problem. Knowing the Real Time position of a UAV means the research into UAV co-operation is able to be run in parallel to the research for localisation and control.
Last week I was in Japan where the government is heavily looking into UAVs and UGVs for the maintenance and repair of the Fukushima Power Station. Having a UAV land on a moving UGV for recharge/refuel is a difficult problem that they must first solve in the lab. I understand that an indoor tracking system isn't ever going to be the full solution.
Paul - I understand that the first issue of designing a control system is knowing where your plane is and the ability to predict where is it will be next. Again I think the flying through windows or a moving hula hoop is a 'sexy' way to show these control system are moving forward and very rapidly as well. The ability to interpret, identify and share information gained from UAVs through imagery is managed by our sister company 2d3. Here it a quick interview with Jon Damush the MD of 2d3 if you interested.
Also r691175002 was able to answer your questions. The only thing I would add is that Vicon cameras work outside now in full sunlight.
Unfortunately I think a motion capture system is and will stay out of the reach of most of the members here, even an extremely affordable system like the Vicon Bonita. And yes, $20,000 in this context can unfortunately be considered extremely affordable. Motion capture systems are a great tool for detailed trajectory tracking, but what hobbyist will ever have that need? They are an extremely valuable tool, but due to the price will primarily be available to research institutions.
An example: we recently purchased a motion capture system for an upcoming graduate course using quadrotor trajectory planning. Due to a limited budget, the full-feature Vicon system was not an option so we purchased a competitor's simpler version for about $15,000. It probably lacks performance in precision and many other areas compared to the Vicon MX, but it gets the job done for us.
Alex, I'd be extremely interested to start an offline discussion with you about the Bonita system. Thanks
The point is that we've described Vicon systems as costing $500,000 before (and the high-end ones do), but there are also much cheaper solutions as Alex notes.
What I'd like to know is how much of that cost is due to hardware and how much software. If there were an open source alternative, how much would it cost?
$20K might seem like a lot of money for a DIY hobbyist. But for someone with a commercial interest (or a research grand) it is peanuts.
DIYDrones is getting pretty big though. Perhaps there are some university people are kicking around that have some ideas...
Mostly here is all about non-profit hobby. Maybe $20.000 system is more affordable than some others, however, I think, for the most part of the members of this community it's still impossible to pay such price. I can hardly imagine who can afford himself to pay such price for hobby staff.
Do you think that $20,000 is affordable for someone who doesn't take any financial benefit from his drone and who earn 30-40k$/years with his regular job ?