A controller to avoid both occlusions and obstacles during a vision-based navigation task in a cluttered environment

This paper presents a sensor-based controller allowing to visually drive a mobile robot towards a target while avoiding visual features occlusions and obstacle collisions. We consider the model of a cart-like robot equipped with proximetric sensors and a camera mounted on a pan-platform. The proposed method relies on the continuous switch between three controllers realizing respectively the nominal vision-based task, the obstacle by passing and the occlusion avoidance. Simulation results are given at the end of the paper.