An uncalibrated stereo visual servo system

Abstract

We describe a robotic system composed of a manipulator and two cameras. We use the vision system to guide the robot hand to a visible target. The camera positions are known only approximately. Our system does not use the details of the kinematics of the manipulator. There is no common frame of reference linking vision system, workspace and robot hand. The stereo vision system gives information in terms of picture coordinates. This information is used to control a three degree of freedom robot manipulator in a straightforward and robust fashion, in terms of lines and points visible in the images. We describe the implementation with which we tested this idea.