Obstacle Avoidance with Visual Control of Adjustable Zoom-Cameras

Obstacle Avoidance with Visual Control of Adjustable Zoom-Cameras

  The new features of the rehabilitation robot FRIEND that consists of a wheelchair and a robot arm to support tetraplegics are presented in this paper. We especially consider obstacle avoidance during grasping and handling of objects. Visual servoing with a stereo-system is used to control the robot. For obstacle avoidance the method of virtual points is used. In this paper, we extend the method to adjustable cameras that are mounted on pan-tilt heads. Together with the stereo-system it guarantees that the gripper and the object are always in the common field of view of both cameras, thereby enhances the robustness of the control system.