Design and implementation of a color-based visual tracking control system

This paper considers the problems of developing a visual servo system to track a flying object based on the color information of the object. The system consists of three parts: a pan and tilt mechanism, image processing module and motor control module. The position of the target object in the space is determined by using the image processing algorithms based on the color detection. The position controllers of the motor control module control the pan and tilt mechanism to track and keep the target object in the field of view of cameras. Use of color detection makes the visual servo system able to work in a more complicated circumstance. The Kalman filter is used for predicting the flying trajectory to improve the performance of tracking control. Moreover, estimation of the point of fall is studied by the projectile physics. The effectiveness of the system is verified through experimental studies. The experimental results show that the designed color-based visual servo system performs well in real-time.