Position-Based Visual Servo Control of Intelligent Wheelchair/bed Docking

Abstract

For the automatic docking problem of a Mecanum-wheeled omnidirectional intelligent wheelchair/bed system, a visual servo control method which is based on position feedback is proposed in this paper. When it is docked with the auxiliary bed, the intelligent wheelchair firstly collects and identifies special landmark on the auxiliary bed through the vehicle vision system; Then the relative pose between the wheelchair and the auxiliary bed is determined according to the transformation between the camera coordinate system and the bed coordinate system based on an artificial landmark; Finally, the intelligent wheelchair is controlled to travel from the initial position to the desired position by position-based visual servo (PBVS) control method and completes docking task between the intelligent wheelchair and the auxiliary bed. The implementation of visual docking control for the intelligent wheelchair is based on the Robotic Operating System (ROS) platform. Experimental results are presented to validate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper.