OKU Laboratory

HoverCanvas​

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​Aerial display technologies, exemplified by drone light shows, have recently garnered significant attention through various research initiatives. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by substantial operational costs. A more cost-effective alternative involves projecting images onto a single, drone-suspended screen. Yet, previous implementations of this approach have been restricted to laser projectors, limiting the display content to simple vector graphics and precluding full-color video imagery.
 
To overcome this limitation, we propose HoverCanvas, a novel aerial display system. HoverCanvas utilizes a "High-Brightness Projector with a Telephoto Lens" to display high-definition, full-color video. This is integrated with a "Telescopic Three-Mirror Gaze Control System" that provides high-speed optical tracking. This combination facilitates dynamic projection mapping onto a target at a distance of 100 meters.
 
The system employs a spherical balloon suspended from a drone as the projection screen. To enable robust tracking, Infrared (IR) LEDs are affixed to both poles of the screen as markers. The "Telescopic Three-Mirror Gaze Control System" then tracks the midpoint of these markers. This IR-based approach ensures stable tracking, particularly at night when the screen itself has low visibility. A photograph of the prototype system and a schematic diagram are shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, respectively.
 
The effectiveness of the proposed method was validated through a field experiment. Dynamic projection mapping was performed from the ground onto a 2.3-meter diameter screen suspended by a drone at a distance of 100 meters. The results, presented in the supplementary video, confirm that stable projection was maintained on the moving screen. This demonstration validates the feasibility of our method for realizing large-scale aerial displays.​