System and method for providing autonomous photography and videography

A method for operating an aerial system, the aerial system including a body, a lift mechanism, an optical system, and a body, the optical system including an optical sensor mounted to the body and movable with respect to the body by an actuation system, an inertial measurement unit (IMU) coupled to the body including a vibration sensor configured to sense a vibration of the body, and a processing system, method including the steps of:

• establishing, by the processing system, a desired flight trajectory;
• detecting a target;
• establishing, by the processing system, a position and a velocity of the target relative to the aerial system;
• controlling, by the processing system, the flight of the aerial system to maintain the aerial system at a distance from the target as a function of the desired flight trajectory and the established position and velocity of the target using the lift mechanism;
• controlling, by the processing system, the actuation system to automatically adjust an angle of the optical sensor relative to the body to maintain the target within a field of view of the optical sensor during the flight of the aerial system;
• controlling, by the processing system, the optical system to capture pictures and/or video
• retrieving a vibration measurement for each time period associated with each captured picture and/or video from the IMU;
• selecting a moving window time interval and calculating a variance/standard deviation of vibration within the moving window time interval;
• and
• automatically selecting pictures and/or videos by comparing the calculated the variance/standard deviation of vibration to a pre-defined threshold.