Switching Control of A Mecanum Wheeled Mobile Robot for Vision-Based Tracking with Intermittent Image Losses

Abstract

Vision-based detection and estimation technologies play crucial roles in target tracking for autonomous vehicles. However, for vision system it is difficult to continuously collect the image information due to occlusion, feature matching failure, etc. This paper is concerned with the target tracking problem for a Mecanum wheeled mobile robot (MWMR) with camera in the presence of intermittent image losses. A switching scheme with two control strategies has been developed to deal with the problem. During the period when the target image is acquired, a stabilizing controller is designed to ensure the convergence of tracking error. When the target image is lost, a predictor is used to provide the controller with estimated tracking error, by which a regular graphic region containing the real position of the target is determined. The stability condition for the tracking system with minimum dwell-time during which the image is acquired has been obtained utilizing the region. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.