Omni-directional visual servoing for human-robot interaction

We describe a visual servoing system developed as a human-robot interface to drive a mobile robot toward any chosen target. An omni-directional camera is used to get the 360 degree of field of view, and an efficient tracking technique is developed to track the target. The use of the omni-directional geometry eliminates, many of the problems common in visual tracking and makes the use of visual servoing a practical alternative for robot-human interaction. The experiments demonstrate that it is an effective and robust way to guide a robot. In particular the experiments show robustness of the tracker to loss of template, vehicle motion, and change in scale and orientation.