1. 1/5G. Silveira, “Cutting-edge Solutions for Vision-based Robot Control” -
Cutting-edge Solutions for
Vision-based Robot Control
Geraldo Silveira, PhD
Geraldo.Silveira@cti.gov.br

2. 2/5G. Silveira, “Cutting-edge Solutions for Vision-based Robot Control” -
Problem Statement
• Vision-based positioning of a
robotic arm with respect to an
object of interest
• Performance requirements:
submillimeter accuracy, fast
motion and robustness to noise
• Applications in automatic object
assembly, inspection, handling,
tooling, etc.
Object
Robot
Camera

3. 3/5G. Silveira, “Cutting-edge Solutions for Vision-based Robot Control” -
Existing Methods

are not robust to arbitrary illumination changes; or

require accurate camera parameters; or

require accurate robot-camera calibration; or

require particular objects; or

require particular camera-object situations; or

require metric information of the object; or

perform in relatively slow motion
Remark: most robot positioning systems rely on (many)
other sensors than just a single camera

4. 4/5G. Silveira, “Cutting-edge Solutions for Vision-based Robot Control” -
Cutting-edge Solution

We have proposed a vision-only positioning solution which
– is highly accurate: all possible visual information is exploited;
no need of particular image features (e.g., points, lines, etc.)
– is versatile: works regardless of object shape and of camera
motion; no need of metric information (e.g., distances, etc.)
– is robust to arbitrary illumination changes, to large camera and
robot calibration errors, and to aberrant measures (e.g., occlusions)
– has large domain and rate of convergence: full rotations (including
180°); path planning; exponential convergence
Further information can be obtained upon request

5. 5/5G. Silveira, “Cutting-edge Solutions for Vision-based Robot Control” -
Application: Object Tracking

Experimental setup
– a fully actuated industrial robotic arm
– a coarsely calibrated conventional camera
– a freely moving object of unknown dimensions

Typical result
Desired camera pose relative to object Some excerpts of the experiment