Passivity-based adaptive 3D visual servoing without depth and image velocity measurements for uncertain robot manipulators

In this work, we consider the 3D visual tracking problem for a robot manipulator with uncertainties in the kinematic and dynamic models. The visual feedback is provided by a fixed and uncalibrated camera located above the robot workspace. The Cartesian motion of the robot end effector can be separated into a 1D motion parallel to the optical axis of the camera and a 2D motion constrained on a plane orthogonal to this axis. Thus, the control design can be simplified, and the overall visual servoing system can be partitioned in two almost-independent subsystems. Adaptive visual servoing schemes, based on a kinematic approach, are developed for image-based look-and-move systems allowing for both depth and planar tracking of a reference trajectory, without using image velocity and depth measurements. In order to include the uncertain robot kinematics and dynamics in the presented solution, we develop a cascade control strategy based on an indirect/direct adaptive method. The stability and convergence properties are analyzed in terms of Lyapunov-like functions and the passivity-based formalism. Numerical simulations including hardware-in-the-loop results, obtained with a robot manipulator and a web camera, are presented to illustrate the performance and feasibility of the proposed control scheme. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.