Towards Practical Visual Servoing in Robotics

Visual servoing was introduced in robotics nearly 4 decades ago. However until now, there are still only a handful of known examples of application of this technique in addressing real word robotics problems such as disaster response, assistance for elderly or handicapped people, etc. As the world is moving towards the use of robotics to improve quality of life, it is time to assess the challenges involved in applying visual servoing to solve real world problems. This paper presents an overview of these challenges, by asking the question what are the missing components for practical visual servoing? and by providing practical possible solutions for these components. Illustration of these challenges and our current practical solutions are given using our 7-DoFs Barrett WAM Arm.