Aesthetic-Aware Trajectory Planning for Multi-ROI UAV Aerial Cinematography

UAV aerial cinematography has become increasingly important in film production, surveying, and smart-city applications due to its efficiency and creative potential. However, existing UAV filming workflows still rely heavily on manual operation and professional piloting skills, resulting in complex mission design, limited planning autonomy, and inconsistent visual quality. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a unified aesthetics-aware trajectory planning framework for multi-region-of-interest (multi-ROI) UAV aerial cinematography that automatically generates safe, efficient, and visually coherent flight paths from user-specified ROIs. The proposed framework consists of three main components. First, for each ROI, candidate viewpoints are sampled using a spiral trajectory, and a learning-based aesthetic evaluation network is applied to select visually optimal viewpoints for local trajectory generation. Second, transition trajectories between ROIs are generated using a Goal-biased Bidirectional Rapidly exploring Random Tree Star (Goal-biased BiRRT*) planner and evaluated through a multi-objective cost function to determine the most suitable transition paths. Third, the global connection of multiple ROIs is formulated as a Set Traveling Salesman Problem (STSP) to obtain an efficient visiting sequence. By integrating learning-based aesthetic evaluation with hierarchical trajectory planning and coordinated multi-ROI route organization, the proposed framework jointly considers flight feasibility, planning efficiency, visual composition quality, and trajectory continuity within a unified planning pipeline. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method generates more visually appealing and coherent aerial trajectories than traditional manual or rule-based approaches, while significantly reducing operational complexity. The proposed system provides an effective solution for autonomous UAV aerial cinematography with improved global consistency, aesthetic performance, and practical planning capability in complex environments.