1994 Articles

Active, uncalibrated visual servoing

Yoshimi, Billibon; Allen, Peter K.

Proposes a method for visual control of a robotic system which does not require the formulation of an explicit calibration between image space and the world coordinate system. Calibration is known to be a difficult and error prone process. By extracting control information directly from the image, the authors free their technique from the errors normally associated with a fixed calibration. The authors demonstrate this by performing a peg-in-hole alignment using an uncalibrated camera to control the positioning of the peg. The algorithm utilizes feedback from a simple geometric effect, rotational invariance, to control the positioning servo loop. The method uses an approximation to the image Jacobian to provide smooth, near-continuous control.