New app lets drone pilots customize flight path and camera movement before takeoff

By Kelly Hodgkins October 19, 2015

Capturing cinema-quality aerial footage with a drone takes more than just an eye for photography and a few hours of flight training. More often than not, it takes an expert pilot, sometimes along with a professional photographer, to control the camera and avoid crashing the drone into its subject. There’s a bit of a learning curve, so to help bridge the gap between novices and experts, a team of computer graphics PhD students at Stanford University have developed an algorithm that levels the playing field by combining flight planning and camera control in one package.

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Similar to existing 3D animation apps that provide smart camera controls to help position a virtual camera in an animation scene, the drone software Horus provides pilots with tools that allow them to plan a flight and position the camera before lift-off. The interactive app allows users to control the motion of a camera during fight by specifying key frames in a video and assigning the proper camera orientation for each frame. The app also takes the physical limitations of the drone into account when it plans a flight, allowing the user to capture the best shot while still keeping the drone in the air.

Unlike existing flight planning tools that use a map-based view, the Stanford app provides a 3D camera preview of the footage and a 2D map of the flight to help users preview their video in Google Earth.”The real video footage is faithful to the virtual preview shown in our app,” said app co-creator Mike Roberts to Engadget. “The workflow is similar to how an animator at Pixar might set up a camera path for an animated movie.”

Drone photography professionals may disagree, but the Stanford team believes the tool has the potential to make pre-scripted aerial cinematography available to novice drone operators. “There are a hundred problems that our app doesn’t solve,” says Roberts. “But for the domain of pre-scripted aerial cinematography, we’ve made a step forward. You can use our app to express yourself and you don’t have to know how to fly a drone to do it.”

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Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…

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