Online Minimization of the Robot Silhouette Viewed From Eye-to-Hand Camera

Redundant robots have the potential to perform internal joints motion without modifying the pose of the end-effector by exploiting the null-space of the Jacobian matrix. Capitalizing on that feature, we developed a control technique for minimizing the robot visual appearance when observed from an eye-to-hand camera. Such algorithm is instrumental in contexts where quickly adjusting the perspective to see objects obstructed by the robot is impractical (e.g., teleoperation in narrow environment). Diminished reality techniques are frequently employed in these cases to mitigate the robot intrusion into the environment, although these techniques may sometimes compromise the perceived realism. The experimental evaluation confirmed the effectiveness of our control algorithm, demonstrating an average reduction of 4.67% of the area covered by the robot within the frame when compared to the case without the optimization action.