Visual servo control of an unmanned ground vehicle via a moving airborne monocular camera

Abstract

The Euclidean position and orientation (i.e., pose) of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is typically required for autonomous navigation and control. In this paper, a collaborative visual servo controller is developed with the objective to regulate an UGV to a desired pose utilizing the feedback from a moving airborne monocular camera system. In contrast to typical camera configurations used for visual servo control problems, the controller in this paper is developed using a moving on-board camera viewing a moving target. Multi-view photogrammetric methods are used to develop relationships between different camera frames and UGV coordinate systems. Lyapunov-based methods are used to prove asymptotic regulation.