Dynamics-Driven Visual Servoing of Over-Actuated Quadrotors

This study introduces a dynamics-driven visual servoing methodology tailored for an over-actuated quadrotor equipped with tilting rotors. The mathematical framework encompasses both translational and rotational dynamics, incorporating the tilting rotor angles to facilitate autonomous control over attitude and position. The stereo camera model is derived utilizing stacked Jacobians. The proposed dynamics-driven methodology establishes a direct correspondence between the dynamics of image pixel accelerations captured by the stereo cameras and the thrust and torque commands of the over-actuated tilting quadrotor. This obviates the necessity for computationally intensive inverse Jacobian computations typically required in traditional visual servoing methods. By employing an over-actuated tilting rotor configuration instead of a conventional quadrotor setup, the dynamics-driven approach surmounts limitations in independently controlling the pose and attitude. It enables the tracking of not only the 3D position but also the orientation of points of interest using the onboard stereo cameras. Simulation outcomes affirm the efficacy of the approach in achieving precise visual tracking.