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More than 2.8 million consumer drones are expected to be sold
this year, up from 2 million last year, says research firm
Gartner. Most carry some kind of camera.
"We want to enable more intuitive and natural interaction with
the flying drone to take photos autonomously - even for the
novice user who has not used drones before," said Ziquan Lan,
one of four researchers behind the project.Their innovation,
called XPose, works in several stages. The user tells the drone
to take photographs from different angles of the subject, such
as a statue. Next, the shot is composed by moving objects on
photos from a sample gallery.
Then the drone finds the best position to take the commissioned
photo. No manual piloting of the drone is needed.
The researchers from the National University of Singapore say
their prototype, based on a Parrot Bebop quadcopter, relies
mainly on a single monocular camera and works reliably even when
there is no GPS signal.
Some remotely controlled drones take their cue from global
positioning system satellites, or GPS, which requires the drone
pilot to know where the image is in respect to the drone, adding
another layer of complexity to the process.
But XPose does away with that. The researchers said it had a
higher success rate in photo-taking tasks than the usual
touchscreen joystick interface.
"Drones will be even smaller (than they are now) so we can carry
them around as a smartphone camera, throw it in the air and take
photos for us," Lan said, as he outlined his vision of the
future.
But the problem is a thorny one, he said, adding that he and
fellow researchers Mohit Shridhar, David Hsu and Shengdong Zhao
went through dozens of methods and environments to evolve a
working prototype.
Several companies are working to simplify how users take
airborne pictures and videos.
A U.S.-based startup, Skydio, which aims for "flying cameras
without the complexity", is working on a drone that follows its
operator using onboard cameras to capture a 360-degree view of
its environs.
Another firm, Squadrone System, offers an "autonomous flying
camera" called HexoPlus for $1,000. A user can program it via a
smartphone app with simple instructions, such as "follow" or
"hover close".
For $700, the Mota Group offers the Lily Next-Gen camera drone
that flies itself and hovers above the user, taking photos and
video.
(Reporting and writing by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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