Image-based visual servoing control of a SCARA type dual-arm robot

Visual servoing is the fusion of results from many elemental areas including high-speed image processing, kinematics, dynamics, control theory, and real-time computing. It has much in common with research into active vision and structure from motion, but is quite different from the often described use of vision in hierarchical task-level robot control systems. We present a new approach to visual feedback control using image-based visual servoing with the stereo vision in this paper. In order to control the position and orientation of a robot with respect to an object, a new technique is proposed using a binocular stereo vision. The stereo vision enables us to calculate an exact image Jacobian not only at around a desired location but also at the other locations. The suggested technique can guide a robot manipulator to the desired location without giving such priori knowledge as the relative distance to the desired location or the model of an object even if the initial positioning error is large. This paper describes a model of stereo vision and how to generate feedback commands. The performance of the proposed visual servoing system is illustrated by the simulation and experimental results and compared with the case of a conventional method for dual-arm robot made by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.