3D Tracking of Multiple Drones Based on Particle Swarm Optimization.

This paper presents a method for the tracking of multiple drones in three-dimensional space based on data from a multi-camera system. It uses the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and methods for background/foreground detection. In order to evaluate the developed tracking algorithm, the dataset consisting of three simulation sequences and two real ones was prepared. The sequences contain from one to ten drones moving with different flight patterns. The simulation sequences were created using the Unreal Engine and the AirSim plugin, whereas the real sequences were registered in the Human Motion Lab at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. The lab is equipped with the Vicon motion capture system, which was used to acquire ground truth data. The conducted experiments show the high efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. For the simulation data, tracking errors from 0.086 m to 0.197 m were obtained, while for real data, the error was 0.101–0.124 m. The system was developed for augmented reality applications, especially games. The dataset is available at http://bytom.pja.edu.pl/drones/ .