Servomatic: a modular system for robust positioning using stereo visual servoing

Abstract

We introduce Servomatic, a modular system for robot motion control based on calibration-insensitive visual servoing. A small number of generic motion control operations referred to as primitive skills use stereo visual feedback to enforce a specific task-space kinematic constraint between a robot end-effector and a set of target features. Primitive skills are able to position with an accuracy that is independent of errors in hand-eye calibration and are easily combined to form more complex kinematic constraints as required by different applications. The system has been applied to a number of example problems, showing that modular, high precision, vision-based motion control is easily achieved with off-the-shelf hardware. Our continuing goal is to develop a system where low-level robot control ceases to be a concern to higher-level robotics researchers.