Towards Selfie Drone: Spatial Localization and Navigation of drone Using Human Pose Estimation

Remotely piloted drones are popular for photography and selfies are the most popular type of pictures. These drones require piloting skills and expertise in controlling maneuvers for taking pictures. We create a selfie drone software solution that eliminates the requirement for manual drone maneuvering to the desired location. The RC transmitter is linked to an Android smartphone that runs the software programme. The user selects or provides a template for a selfie and the drone takes off automatically. The software locks the drone’s home position and uses human pose estimation to find the user’s pose. It computes the position vector of the drone camera for the desired selfie, flies the drone to the desired position vector, and captures the selfie. After that, the drone hovers in the same spot, either waiting for the next template or returning to its home position. After careful review of the existing options, we decided to use DJI Phantom 4 as a selfie drone that is controlled through an RC transmitter by default. We control the drone with DJI SDK and use support vector regression to generate the position vector for capturing selfie images similar to the template provided by the user. The algorithm’s performance on the mobile platform is assessed qualitatively: the regressor is tested on real-world settings, yielding an accuracy of 80%, and the images acquired by the drone resemble the desired template images.

I. Introduction

The technological developments in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) since the last decade have enabled the use of multi copter vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles in many diverse civilian applications. Tech giants like 7-eleven, Amazon, and Google [1] have been doing trials to use commercial drones to deliver their local shipments since 2016. Drones are already utilized in 130 nations, thanks to a dramatic increase in the commercial drone industry over the previous decade [2]. This commercial growth of drones has resulted in an everlasting impact on society and our behaviors [3]. Recent U.S. laws have enabled development of UAVs capable of flying autonomously beyond line of sight [4]. This has been made possible due to the increase in their robustness owing to improved software algorithms and hardware designs equipped with accurate airborne sensors.