Adaptive Robotic Interceptions of Moving Targets with a Target Motion Estimation-Based Visual Tracking Controller

An automated assembly task on production lines requires robotic manipulation of a target when the target is moving. Due to complicated environments and multi-tasking, vision occlusion and uncertainty of dynamics of a gripper/target may happen. Therefore, we developed a vision guided robotic system composed of a target motion estimation-based visual tracking controller and an adaptive controller. The target motion estimation-based visual tracking controller enables the system to estimate target positions and velocities and compute desired robotic positions and velocities based on previous estimates even if the target is not viewed occasionally. Moreover, a robotic end-effector is controlled with the adaptive controller to pursue and catch the target even if the target and gripper parameters are not exactly known. In experiments, interceptions of the target moving at different speeds by using different grippers based on visual feedback were presented to demonstrate good performance on efficiency and robustness of the proposed method.