PWM and PFM for visual servoing in fully decoupled approaches

•We develop novel visual servoing techniques based on pulse modulation (PWM and PFM).•We use a fully decoupled position based visual servoing approach.•The expected appearance of ripple is analyzed by simulation.•The high frequency ripple would be filtered by the manipulator dynamics.

In this paper, novel visual servoing techniques based on Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and Pulse Frequency Modulation (PFM) are presented. In order to apply previous pulse modulations, a fully decoupled position based visual servoing approach (i.e. with block-diagonal interaction matrix) is considered, controlling independently translational and rotational camera motions. These techniques, working at high frequency, could be considered to address the sensor latency problem inherent in visual servoing systems. The expected appearance of ripple due to the concentration of the control action in pulses is quantified and analyzed under simulated scenario. This high frequency ripple does not affect the system performance since it is filtered by the manipulator dynamics. On the contrary it can be seen as a dither signal to minimize the impact of friction and overcome back-lashing.