An image-based control scheme for an active stereo vision system

An active vision system can control the gaze direction of mounted vision sensors and can overcome many shortcomings of other passive vision systems, which have fixed vision sensors. Furthermore, most visual servoing approaches are concerned with a vision sensor or a passive stereo vision system which has fixed relative coordination between two cameras. In this paper, the problem of controlling a motion by visual servoing with an active stereo vision system is addressed. The main goal is to track the object with our active vision system. Firstly, we discuss how to stack image Jacobians in an active stereo vision system and how to control the active stereo cameras based on images. Next, we introduce our active vision system, which has a fast and simple system architecture that uses a high-speed serial communication bus (IEEE 1394a). It is manipulated by a distributed and jerk-bounded control algorithm to ensure smooth system motion. Finally, simulation and experimental results show both the validity of the proposed definition of the stacked Jacobian to control the system and the feasibility of the proposed the control method.