Navigation function-based visual servo control

In this paper, the mapping between the desired camera feature vector and the desired camera pose (i.e., the position and orientation) is investigated to develop a measurable image Jacobian-like matrix. An image-space path planner is then proposed to generate a desired image trajectory based on this measurable image Jacobian-like matrix and an image-space navigation function (NF) (i.e., a special potential field function) while satisfying rigid body constraints. An adaptive, homography-based visual servo tracking controller is then developed to navigate the position and orientation of a camera held by the end-effector of a robot manipulator to a goal position and orientation along the desired image-space trajectory while ensuring the target points remain visible (i.e., the target points avoid self-occlusion and remain in the field-of-view (FOV)) under certain technical restrictions. Due to the inherent nonlinear nature of the problem and the lack of depth information from a monocular system, a Lyapunov-based analysis is used to analyze the path planner and the adaptive controller. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed approach.