Robust Hybrid Visual Servoing of Omnidirectional Mobile Manipulator With Kinematic Uncertainties Using a Single Camera

Abstract

A robust hybrid visual servoing (HVS) method for a single camera-mounted omnidirectional mobile manipulator (OMM) with kinematic uncertainties caused by slipping is proposed herein. Most existing studies pertaining to the visual servoing of mobile manipulators do not consider the kinematic uncertainties and the singularity of the manipulator that can occur during actual operations; furthermore, they required external sensors other than a single camera. In this study, the kinematics of an OMM are modeled considering kinematic uncertainties. Accordingly, an integral sliding-mode observer (ISMO) is designed to estimate the kinematic uncertainties. Subsequently, an integral sliding-mode control (ISMC) law is proposed to achieve robust visual servoing using the estimates of the ISMO. Additionally, an ISMO-ISMC-based HVS method is proposed to address the singularity issue of the manipulator; this method guarantees both robustness and finite-time stability in the presence of kinematic uncertainties. Overall, the entire visual servoing task is performed using only a single camera attached to the end effector without any other external sensors, unlike in previous studies. The stability and performance of the proposed method are verified numerically and experimentally in a slippery environment that generates kinematic uncertainties.