The 5 Axis Live Motion Cam is a five axis system that uses CNC-inspired degrees of freedom to move a camera in space. With fully holonomic properties, the camera motion can be driven in real-time, without relying on path planning as with robotic arms. This allows us to develop a “vehicle like” immersive control interface when monitoring the live video stream. Testing the system in a real-world application – a live cinema performance – we propose a relevant control model and a convenient interface that allows a simple and generic game pad to drive the camera with arbitrary trajectories of finite and tunable curvature. Using commercially available game pad and stepper motor controllers, we designed the 5-axis Live Motion Cam to require minimal calibration and sensing, making it a low-cost solution for real-time camera motion control. Lastly, the implementation of the system in a real-world use case is demonstrated during multiple public performances presented by the live cinema project Shapes of Emergence. Despite our hardware prototype to be dimensioned for macro-imaging, the control principle we propose could be scaled up to room – cinema studio – size, or down to micro-imaging, with the same control computation simplicity.

A Five Axis Motorized Camera Stage with Immersive Live Control. Baudouin Saintyves. (in preparation)