Integration of LIDAR Hardware onto Current Camera Systems

Abstract

In the current field of VFX, it costs an absurd amount of money to add effects to movies or other media. When looking at modern day film credits, there is a significant portion of people dedicated to rotoscoping, which is tracing over scenes frame by frame. This is a necessary task to implement visual effects but is extremely tedious to do. Shade Robotics is a student startup in Ann Arbor attempting to use recent develops in 3D sensor (LIDAR) technologies to expedite the process. There are two main parts in development, creating the physical system to help capture 3D space data while filming, and creating software that can overlap this data to corresponding video and speed up rotoscoping. The capstone dealt with the first part. Currently there were two components of the capture system, the physical sensor itself and a driver box. I was tasked with designing and prototyping various hardware to implement both components. There needed to be a mount to quickly attach and remove the 3D sensor from the camera, while also keeping it perfectly still with respect to the camera. The driver box held all the different electronics to operate the system, from a computer that operates the sensor and stores data to a battery that powers the whole system.