Guaranteeing Field of View Constraints in Visual Servoing Tasks under Uncertain Dynamics

Abstract The problem of visual servoing, while guaranteeing the a priori satisfaction of field-of-view constraints, which are always present in vision sensors, is considered in this paper. Contrary to the current state-of-the-art, which provides solutions at the kinematic level, a torque controller is designed, following the Prescribed Performance Control methodology, capable of additionally imposing a priori specified transient and steady-state performance attributes on the image feature coordinate errors. No information regarding the actual system dynamics is required and no approximation structures (i.e., neural networks, fuzzy systems etc.) are incorporated to acquire such knowledge. The proposed visual servo controller involves very few and simple calculations, making its implementation on embedded control platforms straightforward. Simulation studies clarify and verify the theoretical findings.