Uncalibrated stereo visual servoing for manipulators using virtual impedance control

In this paper, we present an uncalibrated position-based fixed-camera Visual Servoing for robot manipulators, where the goal is to track the 3D position and orientation of the target. The stereo system with 2 USB cameras is uncalibrated with respect to the robot base frame and the transformation between them is estimated on-line while performing the task. Dynamic impedance control is designed to generate a dynamic trajectory for the robot manipulator considering the dynamic environment constraints, such as: robot singularities avoidance and (self-/obstacle-) collision avoidance. Experiments have been carried out to verify performance of the proposed system on a real industrial robot, where the calibration estimation process and handling of all uncertainties in the environment are demonstrated. Moreover the uncalibrated stereo camera system can be manually moved while performing the task in order to obtain a clearer view and the re-calibration is performed automatically and on-line.