Visual tracking strategy of a wheeled mobile robot and a multi-DOF crane equipped with a camera

This paper presents a visual tracking strategy of a wheeled mobile robot and a moving object which is equipped with a camera. Position-based target tracking method is described for the whole system. The coordinate of target point in camera frame is obtained by the image processing of two markers on the robot and the coordinate transformation. Combining the coordinate of target point and the tracking model, the tracking controller can be designed using the method of state feedback. The experiments have been carried out using a 3-D crane as the moving object and the experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the visual tracking controller.