Visual servoing from spheres with paracatadioptric cameras

Abstract : A paracatadioptric camera consists of the coupling of a parabolic mirror with a telecentric lens which realizes an orthographic projection to the image sensor. This type of camera provides large field of view images and has therefore potential applications for mobile and aerial robots. This paper is concerned with visual servoing using paracatadioptric cameras. A new optimal combination of visual features is proposed for visual servoing from spheres. Using this combination, a classical control law is proved to be globally stable even in the presence of modeling error. Experimental and simulation results validate the proposed theoretical results.