Empirical validation of a new visual servoing strategy

The flexibility of computer vision is attractive when designing manipulation systems which must interact with otherwise unsensed objects. However, occlusions introduce significant challenges to the construction of practical vision-based control systems. This paper provides empirical validation of a vision based control strategy that affords guaranteed convergence to a visible goal from essentially any “safe” initial position while maintaining full view of all the feature points along the way. The method applies to first (quasi-static, or “kinematic”) and second (Lagrangian or “mechanical”) order plants that incorporate an independent actuator for each degree of freedom.