Visual registration and navigation using planar features

This paper addresses the problem of registering the hexapedal robot, RHex, relative to a known set of beacons, by real-time visual servoing. A suitably constructed navigation function represents the task, in the sense that for a completely actuated machine in the horizontal plane, the gradient dynamics guarantee convergence to the visually cued goal without ever losing sight of the beacons that define it. Since the horizontal plane behavior of RHex can be represented as a unicycle, feeding back the navigation function gradient avoids loss of beacons, but does not yield an asymptotically stable goal. We address new problems arising from the configuration of the beacons and present preliminary experimental results that illustrate the discrepancies between the idealized and physical robot actuation capabilities.

Authors

• Gabriel A. D. Lopes
• Daniel E. Koditschek

Keywords

• Navigation
• Robot vision systems
• Cameras
• Educational institutions
• Visual servoing
• Convergence
• Vehicle dynamics
• Mobile robots
• Vehicles
• Level control
• Planar Features
• Visual Registration
• Horizontal Plane
• Actuator
• Asymptotically Stable
• Navigation Function
• Dynamical
• Velocity Vector
• Vector Field
• Configuration Space
• Mobile Platform
• Diffeomorphism
• Version Of Problem
• Skew-symmetric
• Camera Field Of View
• Robot Pose
• Quasi-static Model
• World Space