Vision Based Control for Industrial Robots : Research and implementation

Abstract: The automation revolution already helps in many tasks that are now performed by robots.  Increases in the complexity of problems regarding robot manipulators require new approaches or alternatives in order to solve them. This project comprises a research in different available software for implementing easy and fast visual servoing tasks controlling a robot manipulator. It focuses on out-of-the-box solutions. Then, the tools found are applied to implement a solution for controlling an arm from Universal Robots. The task is to follow a moving object on a plane with the robot manipulator. The research compares the most popular software, the state-of-the-art alternatives, especially in computer vision and also robot control. The implementation aims to be a proof of concept of a system divided by each functionality (computer vision, path generation and robot control) in order to allow software modularity and exchangeability. The results show various options for each system to take into consideration. The implementation is successfully completed, showing the efficiency of the alternatives examined. The chosen software is MATLAB and Simulink for computer vision and trajectory calculation interfacing with Robotic Operating System (ROS). ROS is used for controlling a UR3 arm using ros_control and ur_modern_driver packages.  Both the research and the implementation present a first approach for further applications and understanding over the current technologies for visual servoing tasks. These alternatives offer different easy, fast, and flexible methods to confront complex computer vision and robot control problems.