Stereo Tracking and Servoing for Space Applications

This paper proposes a real-time, robust and efficient three-dimensional (3-D) model-based tracking algorithm for visual servoing. A virtual visual servoing approach is used for 3-D tracking. This method is similar to more classical nonlinear pose computation techniques. Robustness is obtained by integrating an M-estimator into the virtual visual control law via an iteratively reweighted least-squares implementation. The presented approach is also extended to the use of multiple cameras. Results show the method to be robust to occlusion, changes in illumination and mistracking.