Hi Everybody!
I am a video maker and animator, and I really want to start experimenting with drones. I have experience with programming and with electronics. What I am most interested in is controlling drones in a small space, like a living room. I would like to be able to “record” or program paths for the drones to fly in, in a very small radius (maybe 3X3X3 meter space).
My question: is this at all feasible, or is it too much for a first drone project? and if it is doable, what would be my best research direction?
From what I read so far ArduCopter seems to be the best option.
Thanks,
Vertigo5.
Hi and welcome to the forum 
Your project does sound very cool, and from what I understand you want to try do somethingsimilar to the vicon tracking system? As I dont think current technology is powerful enough to do all that onboard a drone in an indoor environment on a small drone.
Although arducopter is a great platform for development, I feel that its better suited to larger outdoor drones that are largely reliant on GPS. My suggestion is you consider something like the crazyflie 2.0, as its actualy designed as a flying development platform, and its small enough to fly indoors.
In terms of a research starting point you could have a look at SLAM, or maybe using something like a kinect to track your drone in 3D space?
Otherwise do keep us updated as to the progress of your project if you do get started on it. My main focus is computer vision so if you need any help with that just let me know.
I’m not sure how small your drone has to be to fly indoor, but you could check the navio+ or navio2 board (size of raspberry pi) and use your developer skills to start a project with image preprocessing to navigate within a small area