Switching Reference Image-Based Visual Servoing of Quadrotor for Homing and Docking on the Wall

Quadrotor operates on a limited amount of battery capacity. To overcome this limitation, docking is required so that the quadrotor is able to recharge the battery to full capacity. One of the ways to achieve docking is by means of visual servoing. Some of the commonly used visual servoing methods are position-based visual servoing (PBVS) and image-based visual servoing (IBVS). However, these methods stop working when there is no resemblance of target features between acquired image and desired image. Such problem arises when the target features from acquired image are out of image plane or disoriented due to quadrotor’s skewed position or appeared to be disfigured due to bad weather conditions. To solve this problem, a switching reference IBVS method is proposed in this study. The underlying concept of the proposed method is to switch the desired target features to match the currently acquired target features. During simulation, the proposed method is robust under the effect of missing target features.