Omnidirectional Visual-Servo of a Gough–Stewart Platform

This paper deals with the visual control of the Gough-Stewart platform using a central catadioptric camera observing the platform´s legs. This allows a large field of view to be obtained and avoids the occlusion problems observed when a classical perspective camera is used. An automatic and simple method to detect the projections of the leg in the image is also proposed. The control scheme presented here is shown to encompass the classical perspective camera case, as well as catadioptric ones. Finally, experimental results comparing two kinds of visual features (leg directions and leg edges) are described.