Visually servoed gripping of a used car battery

Abstract

This contribution presents a position-based approach to visual servoing that allows the manipulation of quasi- or nonpolyhedral objects in a complex scene, namely the engine compartment of a used car. During a manipulation, the moving disassembly robot with its end-effector-mounted tool as well as the-possibly moving-object are observed by an independently mobile, binocular camera configuration. A simple proportional control law is used to guide the robot to its manipulation position. Vision-based tracking as implemented here tolerates mutual occlusions of tool and object. Moreover, it does not require additional feature configurations such as white circular patterns on homogeneous black background to reliably pursue tool and object. We demonstrate simultaneous movements of tool, object and independently mobile camera configuration during 6-DOF closed-loop control.