Vikas Sathaye, a Mumbai engineer, is a part of the team that won the Oscars 2018 Scientific and Technical Award. The team consists of 4 members. All the 4 were felicitated “for the concept, design, engineering and implementation of the Shotover K1 Camera System”, at the Beverly Hills ceremony. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences describes the concept as a “six-axis stabilised aerial camera mount” that has an “enhanced ability to frame shots while looking straight down”.
Sathaye said in his statement released to the press that, “One of the reasons to start this company in Queenstown was the natural beauty and stunning scenery which attract a lot of film producers and directors,”
“The camera mount gets attached to the base of a helicopter, which carries the camera and lens. Its primary function is to eliminate any vibration from reaching the camera and thus getting steady footage. The other function for the camera mount is to move the camera head in the desired direction as required by the camera operator, who sits inside the helicopter and uses a joystick to control the camera head movement,” Sathaye added.
Also Read: White House Announces End Of Green Card Backlog
In 2009, Sathaye joined Shotover Camera Systems, a new company in Queenstown, New Zealand. He worked there on the aerial mount. Shotover K1 was named for the aerial mount or gimbal used for 3D aerial filming.
Born in Pune in 1967, Sathaye was raised in Mumbai. He finished his schooling to complete a diploma in instrumentation from VPM’s polytechnic, Thane. Then after Sathaye studied BE Electronics from VIT Pune, and an MTech in instrumentation from IISc.
For 7 years, Sathaye taught at Pune’s Cummins College of Engineering for Women. During this period, he was sent for a project to Italy with Fiat for three months. He said that this experience was a great inspiration for him to get into the field of embedded software technology.
