Binocular vision-based robot control with active hand-eye coordination

Abstract

Traditional eye-in-hand robotic systems are capable of performing versatile manipulation, but generally they can only observe a restricted workspace. As regards eye-to-hand configurations, tasks can be controlled within the field of view of the vision system with accuracy up to the pixel resolution of the vision system. In this paper, the robot workspace is further expanded by allowing cameras to be actively controlled by pan, tilt, and zoom motion. This configuration can be applied to a mobile robot equipped with a binocular vision system. The manipulator for visual servo control purpose can be either mounted on-board or in fixed configuration. To enable large and flexible workspace visual servoing with precision under such a configuration, active hand-eye coordination must be assured. The control strategy is successfully validated through convergence analysis and simulations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.