Hybrid Visual Servoing Design for a Continuum Robot under Visibility Constraint and Voice Commands

Abstract

This paper presents a method to combine voice control and hybrid visual servoing for a continuum robot. In this design, the continuum robot autonomously tracks the element of interest and maintains its position in the safe region based on image information. A method of hybrid visual servoing is proposed to integrate 2D image-based visual servoing (IBVS) to ensure the elements of interests under visibility constraints and 3D position-based visual servoing (PBVS) to adjust the robot to a desired pose in the constraint region. The robotic camera thus provides stable image while tracking the element of interest. In this design, the user can move the continuum robot to acquire the desired view by voice commands. In voice control, the system can recognize connecting words to control the robot. All software modules are integrated using Robot Operating System (ROS) for controlling the continuum robot. Experimental results obtained from a prototype continuum robot verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.