A performance criterion for the depth estimation with application to robot visual servo control

This article deals with the depth observability problem of a robot visual system with a moving camera. In the visual system, the unknown depth of a feature point is estimated from the input of the camera velocity and the output of the image of the feature point. Although it is well known that the linear velocity of the camera must satisfy some constraints for successful depth estimation, this proposes a criterion to measure the performance of the depth estimation, which is a heuristic extension from an estimation result of a linear system. This performance criterion depends on both the image position and the linear velocity of the camera. Some simulation and experiment examples demonstrate and verify the proposed performance criterion. Furthermore, this criterion is used to develop a new visual servo control scheme that has good performance in both the depth estimation and the visual control. This control scheme is also verified by a simulation example. 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.