Goals: The project will be a success if video captured by a camera can be overlaid with video generated by a 3D computer graphics package resulting in a believable final product.
Description: CPR will move a camera on a programmed path. The camera will be mounted on a platform that allows tilt, pan, and with a jib-arm, boom the camera for use in recording footage of small-scale models, and also real actors. To insert CG graphics, CPR will use ICARUS software to track camera movement.

***Final Report***

News Updates:

• Early February, Created this site
• February 28th, Mid-Semester Demo #1, we showed Adam's stepper motor driver to the class and Andy's designs for the chassis on Autocad.
• March 11th, Andy got the designs to the ECE Machine Shop for review and eventual build.
• March 21st, Final designs were submitted to the Machine Shop.
• March 31st, Met with Craig from the Machine Shop and discussed chassis redesigns.
• April 16th, Chassis completed and delieverd to ADSL.
• April 17th, Added chassis images to this site (see below).
• May 2nd, Finished project, with multithreading of four various degrees of freedom.
• May 5th, Finished Final Report which is available for viewing from this website.
• June 9th, Added photos of the demo day into a photo album.
  

Test Videos:

View a preliminary test video created by hand. The movement was *close* to a circular path and the video generated in the computer *was* a circular path. Notice the problem.

Here is a test video generated using ICARUS (see the links to the right). It guesses at the movement without any information other than the digital video stream itself.

• Software that does the task based on image analysis. Check out the gallery for examples!:
  http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/icarus/index.php
• A video of a professional crane, the Gato Crane in action:
  http://www.gatocrane.com/pages/images/pourmovi.mpg