Tracking techniques for visual servoing tasks

Many of today's visual servoing systems rely on the use of markers on the object to provide features for control. There is thus a need for a visual system that provides control features regardless of the appearance of the object. Region based tracking is a natural approach since it does not require any special type of features. In this paper we present two different approaches to region based tracking: 1) a multi-resolution gradient based approach (using optical flow); and 2) a discrete feature based search approach. We present experiments conducted with both techniques for different types of image motions. Finally, the performance, drawbacks and limitations of used techniques are discussed.