<title>Method of shot determination in a robot camera cooperative shooting system</title>

Abstract

We are building a program-production system employing multiple robot cameras as a new program-production support technology. In this system, the robot cameras are automatically controlled in accordance with shooting rules that specify the relationship between changes in the program situation and the shots taken by individual cameras, but studio layout elements, such as the number of participants and the position in which flip-cards are displayed, are different for each program. For this reason, production staff must reset shooting rules for every program, and this operation is extremely burdensome in the limited preparation time available. We therefore devised a method of automatically generating shooting rules through simple information input based on analysis of the shooting methods of cameramen, and have tested the validity of this method in simulation tests. Moreover, we built a program-production system in which robot cameras are connected via a network to various sensors that we developed to detect changes in the program situation, and we evaluated the system by conducting program shooting experiments whose subject is engaged in actual TV program production.