This paper provides a tutorial introduction to visual servo control of robotic manipulators. Since the topic spans many disciplines our goal is limited to providing a basic conceptual framework. We begin by reviewing the prerequisite topics from robotics and computer vision, including a brief review of coordinate transformations, velocity representation, and a description of the geometric aspects of the image formation process. We then present a taxonomy of visual servo control systems. The two major classes of systems, position-based and image-based systems, are then discussed. Since any visual servo system must be capable of tracking image features in a sequence of images, we include an overview of feature-based and correlation-based methods for tracking. We conclude the tutorial with a number of observations on the current directions of the research field of visual servo control. 1 Introduction Today there are over 800,000 robots in the world, mostly working in factory environment...

In 1960, R.E. Kalman published his famous paper describing a recursive solution to the discrete-data linear filtering problem. Since that time, due in large part to advances in digital computing, the Kalman filter has been the subject of extensive research and application, particularly in the area of autonomous or assisted navigation. The Kalman filter is a set of mathematical equations that provides an efficient computational (recursive) means to estimate the state of a process, in a way that minimizes the mean of the squared error. The filter is very powerful in several aspects: it supports estimations of past, present, and even future states, and it can do so even when the precise nature of the modeled system is unknown. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical introduction to the discrete Kalman filter. This introduction includes a description and some discussion of the basic discrete Kalman filter, a derivation, description and some discussion of the extended Kalman filter, and a relatively simple (tangible) example with real numbers & results.

Important inference problems in statistical physics, computer vision, error-correcting coding theory, and artificial intelligence can all be reformulated as the computation of marginal probabilities on factor graphs. The belief propagation (BP) algorithm is an efficient way to solve these problems that is exact when the factor graph is a tree, but only approximate when the factor graph has cycles. We show that BP fixed points correspond to the stationary points of the Bethe approximation of the free energy for a factor graph. We explain how to obtain regionbased free energy approximations that improve the Bethe approximation, and corresponding generalized belief propagation (GBP) algorithms. We emphasize the conditions a free energy approximation must satisfy in order to be a “valid ” or “maxent-normal ” approximation. We describe the relationship between four different methods that can be used to generate valid approximations: the “Bethe method, ” the “junction graph method, ” the “cluster variation method, ” and the “region graph method.” Finally, we explain how to tell whether a region-based approximation, and its corresponding GBP algorithm, is likely to be accurate, and describe empirical results showing that GBP can significantly outperform BP.

This paper presents a new algorithm for mobile robot localization, called Monte Carlo Localization (MCL). MCL is a version of Markov localization, a family of probabilistic approaches that have recently been applied with great practical success. However, previous approaches were either computationally cumbersome (such as grid-based approaches that represent the state space by high-resolution 3D grids), or had to resort to extremely coarse-grained resolutions. Our approach is computationally efficient while retaining the ability to represent (almost) arbitrary distributions. MCL applies sampling-based methods for approximating probability distributions, in a way that places computation " where needed." The number of samples is adapted on-line, thereby invoking large sample sets only when necessary. Empirical results illustrate that MCL yields improved accuracy while requiring an order of magnitude less computation when compared to previous approaches. It is also much easier to implement...

The Spatial Semantic Hierarchy is a model of knowledge of large-scale space consisting of multiple interacting representations, both qualitative and quantitative. The SSH is inspired by the properties of the human cognitive map, and is intended to serve both as a model of the human cognitive map and as a method for robot exploration and map-building. The multiple levels of the SSH express states of partial knowledge, and thus enable the human or robotic agent to deal robustly with uncertainty during both learning and problem-solving. The control level represents useful patterns of sensorimotor interaction with the world in the form of trajectory-following and hill-climbing control laws leading to locally distinctive states. Local geometric maps in local frames of reference can be constructed at the control level to serve as observers for control laws in particular neighborhoods. The causal level abstracts continuous behavior among distinctive states into a discrete model ...

A key component of a mobile robot system is the ability to localize itself accurately and, simultaneously, to build a map of the environment. Most of the existing algorithms are based on laser range finders, sonar sensors or artificial landmarks. In this paper, we describe a vision-based mobile robot localization and mapping algorithm, which uses scale-invariant image features as natural landmarks in unmodified environments. The invariance of these features to image translation, scaling and rotation makes them suitable landmarks for mobile robot localization and map building. With our Triclops stereo vision system, these landmarks are localized and robot ego-motion is estimated by least-squares minimization of the matched landmarks. Feature viewpoint variation and occlusion are taken into account by maintaining a view direction for each landmark. Experiments show that these visual landmarks are robustly matched, robot pose is estimated and a consistent three-dimensional map is built. As image features are not noise-free, we carry out error analysis for the landmark positions and the robot pose. We use Kalman filters to track these landmarks in a dynamic environment, resulting in a database map with landmark positional uncertainty.

. To operate successfully in indoor environments, mobile robots must be able to localize themselves. Most current localization algorithms lack flexibility, autonomy, and often optimality, since they rely on a human to determine what aspects of the sensor data to use in localization (e.g., what landmarks to use). This paper describes a learning algorithm, called BaLL, that enables mobile robots to learn what features/landmarks are best suited for localization, and also to train artificial neural networks for extracting them from the sensor data. A rigorous Bayesian analysis of probabilistic localization is presented, which produces a rational argument for evaluating features, for selecting them optimally, and for training the networks that approximate the optimal solution. In a systematic experimental study, BaLL outperforms two other recent approaches to mobile robot localization. Keywords: artificial neural networks, Bayesian analysis, feature extraction, landmarks, localization, mobi...

We present a promising new mathematical method for tracking a user's pose (position and orientation) for interactive computer graphics. The method, which is applicable to a wide variety of both commercial and experimental systems, improves accuracy by properly assimilating sequential observations, filtering sensor measurements, and by concurrently autocalibrating source and sensor devices. It facilitates user motion prediction, multisensor data fusion, and higher report rates with lower latency than previous methods. Tracking systems determine the user's pose by measuring signals from low-level hardware sensors. For reasons of physics and economics, most systems make multiple sequential measurements which are then combined to produce a single tracker report. For example, commercial magnetic trackers using the SPASYN ( Space Synchro) system sequentially measure three magnetic vectors and then combine them mathematically to produce a report of the sensor pose. Our new approach produces tracker reports as each new lowlevel sensor measurement is made rather than waiting to form a complete collection of observations. Because single observations under-constrain the mathematical solution, we refer to our approach as single-constraint-at-a-time or SCAAT tracking. The key is that the single observations provide some information about the user's state, and thus can be used to incrementally improve a previous estimate. We recursively apply this principle, incorporating new sensor data as soon as it is measured. With this approach we are able to generate estimates more frequently, with less latency, and with improved accuracy. We present results from both an actual implementation, and from extensive simulations.

In treating dynamic systems, sequential Monte Carlo methods use discrete samples to represent a complicated probability distribution and use rejection sampling, importance sampling, and weighted resampling to complete the on-line "filtering" task. In this article we propose a special sequential Monte Carlo method, the mixture Kalman filter, which uses random mixture of normal distributions to represent a target distribution. It is designed for on-line estimation and prediction of conditional and partial conditional dynamic linear models, which are themselves a class of widely used nonlinear system and also serve to approximate many other nonlinear systems. Compared with a few available filtering methods including Monte Carlo ones, the efficiency gain provided by the mixture Kalman filter can be very substantial. Another contribution of this article is the formulation of many nonlinear systems into conditional or partial conditional linear form, to which the mixture Kalman filter can be...

Optimal filtering problems are ubiquitous in signal processing and related fields. Except for a restricted class of models, the optimal filter does not admit a closed-form expression. Particle filtering methods are a set of flexible and powerful sequential Monte Carlo methods designed to solve the optimal filtering problem numerically. The posterior distribution of the state is approximated by a large set of Dirac-delta masses (samples/particles) that evolve randomly in time according to the dynamics of the model and the observations. The particles are interacting; thus, classical limit theorems relying on statistically independent samples do not apply. In this paper, our aim is to present a survey of recent convergence results on this class of methods to make them accessible to practitioners.