Planning Tracking Motions for an Intelligent Virtual Camera

We consider the problem of automatically generating viewpoint motions for a virtual camera tracking a moving target. Given the target's trajectory, we plan the motion of a camera to maintain visibility with the target while optimizing certain camera-specific criteria, such as preferred view angle or view distance. Previous work has shown that optimal paths for this problem can be found with a dynamic programming approach. However, efficiency for this type of approach, even with a simplified view model, is not good enough for on-line applications. We proposed a novel approach that searches for a collision-free path satisfying visibility constraints in the relative configuration space between the moving target and the tracking camera. The search is conducted in a best-first fashion according to time and other optimization criteria. We have implemented this algorithm in a software package that is capable of generating such a tracking motion in fractions of a second. This software mo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Tsai-Yen Li, Tzong-Hann Yu
• Keywords: Camera Tracking, ICRA 1999, Preferred View Angle, Robotics, Target's Trajectory