Autonomous Aerial Filming With Distributed Lighting by a Team of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This letter describes a method for autonomous aerial cinematography with distributed lighting by team of unmanned vehicles (UAVs). Although camera-carrying multi-rotor helicopters have become commonplace in cinematography, their usage is limited to scenarios sufficient natural light or provided static artificial lights. We propose use formation as tool filming target under illumination from various directions, which one the fundamental techniques traditional cinematography. decompose multi-UAV trajectory optimization problem tackle non-linear cinematographic aspects and obstacle avoidance at separate stages, allows us re-plan real time react changes dynamic environments. The performance our has been evaluated realistic simulation field experiments, where we show how it increases quality shots that capable planning safe trajectories even cluttered