Development of an Accurate Video Shooting Method Using Multiple Drones Automatically Flying over Onuma Quasi-National Park

In recent years, promotional videos of mountains, seashores, and lakes have been created using drones. Shooting videos of natural landscapes with drones usually requires manual operation, and relies on the skill of the operator. However, if the intention is to shoot videos over a wide geographical area, manual operation is not sufficiently accurate. Therefore to accomplish this, and to take full advantage of the features of a drone, automatic operation is desirable. In this paper, we propose a method of safely modelling a video target and flight route. This includes planning for video shooting on the basis of a model, to realize accurate automatic video shooting of natural landscapes with drones. It was assumed that multiple drones would be operated simultaneously. Therefore, we developed an error verification method to compensate for performance differences between drones. To verify the usefulness of the method, it was used to shoot actual video images of Onuma quasi-national park in the south of Hokkaido Prefecture.