Automated Tools for Aerial Photography using Quadcopter with GPS Flight Path (Android Version)

Abstract

With the rapid development on Quadcopters, Aerial Photography has become more and more popular these years. Photographers are allowed to get into extreme photography such as filmmaking, photo shooting in extreme place, where the places are usually hard to be accessed by photographers. The advanced developed Quadcopter are equipped GPS, and on-board 3-axis stabilized camera, the Quadcopter company provides software developer tools to write mobile apps to control the Quadcopter, with the use of Software Development Kits (SDK), developer is able to access the Quadcopter, design a flying flight path and control the camera. In this project, the Quadcopter model used is DJI Phantom 3 Standard, it includes GPSassisted hover, video camera, 3-axis stabilization gimbal. This project is to develop a mobile application on Android platform, with the function of setting flight paths with GPS, capture videos and shots. The purpose of this application is to allow photographers access the Quadcopter easier and capture photos or videos in an extreme place. Unlike traditional camera, photographers do not need to get inside the place to capture photos, the intelligent flight in Quadcopter helps them do the job.