The following was kindly submitted to the community by Aurel Wildfellner.
"I just wanted to point out my master thesis to you. I started it in late 2011 so it is sort of dated. It is about automatic focus control/tracking. I wrote an extensive thesis, the entire (experimental not productive) software is free software and published an early demo at siggraph as well (where most of the early demo shots are from).
https://atommuell.mum.jku.at/~aurel/focustracking/
I put a lot of time into it and back then it was sort of ahead of it's time. Today we already see similar products for advanced focus control but still rather simple and not as experimental and daring as the techniques I explored. So this was basic research.
I sort of moved on and didn't develop this into any useful tool for filmmakers. However, if someone is planning to work on something similar in your community, I would be happy to help out or even join the effort again."