Image-based servoing of non-holonomic vehicles using non-central catadioptric cameras

Novel contributions on image-based control of a mobile robot using a general catadioptric camera model are presented in this paper. Visual servoing applications using catadioptric cameras have essentially been using central cameras and the corresponding unified projection model. So far only in a few cases more general models have been used. In this paper we address the problem of visual servoing using the socalled the radial model. The radial model can be applied to many camera configurations and in particular to non-central catadioptric systems with mirrors that are symmetric around an axis coinciding with the optical axis. In this case, we show that the radial model can be used with a non-central catadioptric camera to allow effective image-based visual servoing (IBVS) of a mobile robot. Two sets of experiments are carried. In one of the sets, IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) is used to measure the relative rotation of the robot and in the other set visual features are solely used. The achieved results validate both the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method for imaged-based control of a non-holonomic robot.