Visual servoing of planar robots via velocity fields

A novel approach to visual servoing of robot is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the paper addresses the application of the velocity field control philosophy to visual servoing of robot manipulator under fixed-camera configuration. The analysis and experimental evaluation is carried out on a planar direct-drive robot to illustrate the basic concepts and performance. The main feature of the proposed approach is that a better performance can be achieved than under regulation approach. The control structure is based on a hierarchical scheme utilizing a joint velocity inner loop and a kinematic outer loop. Taking into account the nonlinear robot dynamics, it is shown that the closed-loop system is stable.