Obstacle-Aware IBVS Target Tracking Via Feature-Space Projection and Virtual Imaging Guidance with ADP-Shaped Terminal Cost
Mingcong Li, Zhen Chen, Xiangdong Liu
Abstract
We propose a visual-servoing and obstacle-avoidance controller for a wheeled mobile robot (WMR) with a two-axis gimbal camera that operates without mapping, using only vision and lightweight forward sensing. A task-allocation MPC with online terminal-cost iteration is introduced. Specifically, task projection in the image-feature space mitigates underactuation and coupling–induced local optima; Virtual Imaging Constraint Guidance (VICG) yields a visibility-preserving heading reference that steers the trajectory around obstacles; and an Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) module learns a context-aware terminal cost online, providing long-horizon guidance for mid-horizon prediction. Relying solely on image feedback plus lightweight ranging, the method coordinates the WMR and gimbal to accomplish obstacle avoidance and visual-servo tracking jointly. Hardware experiments validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.