Currently, we can visually servo a 100 micron outside diameter LIGA gear to a desired x,y reference position as determined from a synthetic image of the gear. The industrial setting dictated a simple and intuitive uncoupled control approach which minimizes the use of embedded kinematic or dynamic models or the need for calibration. The system achieves a high level of precision in both position and orientation control of a 6-DOF robotic arm. An adaptive robot controller is proposed to achieve a contacting task with an unknown environment, while the robot is visually guided. The proposed controller has a hybrid structure composed of a visual servoing controller and a force controller.
Experimental results validate the proposed scheme .
The mining industry is highly suitable for the application of robotics and automation technology since the work is both arduous and dangerous. Visual servoing is a means of integrating non-contact visual sensing with machine control to augment or replace operator based control. The article describes two of our current mining automation projects in order to demonstrate some, perhaps unusual, applications of visual servoing, and also to illustrate some very real problems with robust computer vision . It is assumed that a part with a known shape but unknown orientation is placed on the turntable which is rotating with an unknown motion dynamics. The task considered is of importance in various problems concerning industrial automation, viz.