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

Robotics