Direct visual servoing based on multiple intensity histograms

Classically Visual servoing considered the regulation in the image of a set of visual features (usually geometric features). Recently direct visual servoing scheme, such as photometric visual servoing, have been introduced in order to consider every pixel of the image as a primary source of information and thus avoid the extraction and the tracking of such geometric features. Previous works proposed methods to use directly the image intensities in the definition of the control law, by using for example mutual information. In this paper, we propose a method to extend these works by using a global descriptor, namely intensity histograms, on the whole or multiple sub-sets of the images in order to achieve control of a 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) robot. The results are then demonstrated through experimental validations.