Human-in-the-Loop Camera Control for a Mechatronic Broadcast Boom

Platforms like gantries, booms, aircrafts, and submersibles are often used in the broadcasting industry. To avoid collisions and occlusions, such mechatronic platforms often possess redundant degrees-of-freedom (DOFs). As a result, manual manipulating of such platforms demands much skill. This paper describes the implementation of several controllers that, by using computer vision, attempts to reduce the number of manually manipulated DOFs. Experiments were performed to assess the performance of each controller. A model for such a system was developed and validated. To determine how the visual servoing can improve the tracking, a novice operator and an expert were asked to manually track a moving target with the assistance of visual servoing. The results of these tests were analyzed and compared