Visual motion observer-based pose synchronization: A passivity approach

In this paper, we address a motion synchronization problem in SE(3) and present a novel passivity based visual feedback system. Though a passivity based control law to achieve synchronization has already been presented in one of our previous works, we have not mentioned how to get information necessary to implement the law (that is, relative positions and orientations of neighbors) yet. The main focus of this paper is thus on achievement of pose synchronization with only relative sensing, i.e. it does not require any central sensing and communication. We moreover address visibility maintenance and collision avoidance problems, which are essential to maintain connectivity in vision based sensing systems. The effectiveness of our control scheme is demonstrated through an experiment on a planar testbed.