Omnidirectional visual control of mobile robots based on the 1D trifocal tensor

The precise positioning of robotic systems is of great interest particularly in mobile robots. In this context, the use of omnidirectional vision provides many advantages thanks to its wide field of view. This paper presents an image-based visual control to drive a mobile robot to a desired location, which is specified by a target image previously acquired. It exploits the properties of omnidirectional images to preserve the bearing information by using a 1D trifocal tensor. The main contribution of the paper is that the elements of the tensor are introduced directly in the control law and neither any a priori knowledge of the scene nor any auxiliary image are required. Our approach can be applied with any visual sensor obeying approximately a central projection model, presents good robustness to image noise, and avoids the problem of a short baseline by exploiting the information of three views. A sliding mode control law in a square system ensures stability and robustness for the closed loop. The good performance of the control system is proven via simulations and real world experiments with a hypercatadioptric imaging system.