Which platform can follow a travel creator through a crowd and keep the shot?
research/capture-follow
Which platform can follow a creator through a crowd and keep the shot? A drone that ignores pedestrians frames 99.9% of the time but falls to 39% at 0.3 people/m² once it avoids them; a wheeled robot is stopped by step lines 42–47% of the walk, and a flat-floor one that ignores people passes within 0.5 m ~500 times an hour. 2-D simulation, assumed platform figures.
What it found
A 2-D crowd simulation of a tripod, a wheeled robot, a wheel-legged robot and a drone holding a camera 2.5 m behind a walking creator among pedestrians who do not react to it. A drone that ignores pedestrians frames the creator 99.9% of the time at any density, but steering around people drops it to 69% at 0.1 people/m2 and 39% at 0.3; a ground robot on a plaza with curbs and one ramp is stopped 42–47% of the walk, and wheel-legs hold the frame 70% of the time in a thin crowd but 4.5% in a dense one. Avoidance and framing trade off: a flat-floor wheeled robot that ignores people frames 98% of the time while passing within 0.5 m of a pedestrian about 500 times an hour. All platform speeds, powers and masses are assumed; pedestrians do not avoid the platforms, and the drone is not limited by altitude, wind or regulation.
A figure from its own output
Paper, code and results
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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.