Visual servoing via navigation functions

This paper presents a framework for visual servoing that guarantees convergence to a visible goal from almost every initially visible configurations while maintaining full view of all the feature points along the way. The method applies to first- and second-order fully actuated plant models. The solution entails three components: a model for the "occlusion-free" configurations; a change of coordinates from image to model coordinates; and a navigation function for the model space. We present three example applications of the framework, along with experimental validation of its practical efficacy.