Autonomous Following and Filming of a Test Vehicle

Abstract: Quadcopters have been used as filming platforms for years and are mainly man-ually controlled, with its inherited difficulties. The objective of this thesis projectwas to eliminate the human factor by developing and constructing a prototypefor an autonomous filming platform at BorgWarner AB. Different methods forfollowing and filming the test vehicles were investigated with the use of differentsensors, such as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Inertial Navi-gation System (INS). These were evaluated by simulations in Simulink where itwas shown that an improved reference following could be achieved by the use ofa complementary filter. Further development was focused on writing a controlsystem for the prototype in which the following-algorithms and prototype couldbe evaluated. Final testing resulted in the conclusion that the desired objectivewas feasible with the current platform. There were however some limitations inthe desired change in direction of the quadcopter, first discovered during simu-lations and proven during experimental testing.