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.

翻译：本文描述了一种利用多无人机团队实现分布式照明的自主空中拍摄方法。尽管搭载摄像头的多旋翼直升机在影视拍摄中已变得普遍，但其使用局限于自然光充足或静态人工光源照明的场景。我们提出将无人机编队作为工具，从不同方向照明目标进行拍摄，这是传统影视拍摄的基本技术之一。我们将多无人机轨迹优化问题分解，在不同阶段分别处理非线性影视拍摄约束与避障问题，从而能够实时重新规划并响应动态环境变化。我们的方法性能已在逼真的仿真场景和实地实验中得到评估，结果表明该方法能提升拍摄质量，即使在复杂环境中也能规划安全轨迹。