Path Planning for Visual Servoing: A Review and Issues

In this survey we provide a comprehensive technical review of existing major approaches to path planning for visual servoing. Visual servoing has been introduced as a promising approach for sensor-based robotic tasks. The basic visual servoing task is to guide the motion of a robot with respect to a target object based on the feedback obtained through a vision system. Amalgamation of path planning techniques with reactive visual servoing strategies can robustify existing image-based tracking systems in robotics applications where a high disparity between the initial and desired views of a target is inevitable (e.g., target interception, space docking, reaching and grasping, etc.). The planning stage does so by accounting for critical constraints and uncertainties in the system resulting in a more robust visual servoing process. We discuss different planning approaches, explain the associated set of constraints and assumptions, and discuss the underlying path planning techniques along with the issues regarding their integration with reactive visual servo controllers.