Visual servoing path-planning with elliptical projections

Abstract

This paper proposes a path planning approach for visual servoing with elliptical projections. 3D primitives like circles and spheres may project onto image plane of a perspective camera as ellipsoids. From these elliptical projections, moment-based features are constructed. Constraints required by the usage of moment-based features will include camera field of view (FOV) limits and occlusion avoidance of all the observed 3D primitives, a straight or an obstacle dodging path, global convergence and etc. We propose to parametrize these constraints into polynomial inequalities in a common path abscise. They share common variables in polynomial coefficients and these variables will be reassigned via a multidimensional nonlinear minimization process until a satisfactory path is obtained. Such a planned path is interpolated into several segments, at the ends of which elliptical projections are tracked by an image-based visual servoing controller. Two synthetic scenarios demonstrate excellent performance of the path-planning algorithm and tracking scheme.