Dynamic Visual Servoing for a Quadrotor Using a Virtual Camera

Abstract

This paper presents a dynamic image-based visual servoing (IBVS) control law for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a single fixed on-board camera. The motion control problem is to regulate the relative position and yaw of the vehicle to a moving planar target located within the camera’s field of view. The control law is termed dynamic as it’s based on the dynamics of the vehicle. To simplify the kinematics and dynamics, the control law relies on the notion of a virtual camera and image moments as visual features. The convergence of the closed-loop is proven to be globally asymptotically stable for a horizontal target. In the case of nonhorizontal targets, we modify the control using a homography decomposition. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate the control law’s performance.