Uncalibrated hybrid force-vision manipulation

We present a method employing hybrid force and vision based control to effect a sequence of contact manipulations. Instead of requiring a-priori object and environment models, force sensing is used to simultaneously update a surface model while controlling the manipulator. This is incorporated into an uncalibrated visual servoing system, which also estimates the visual-motor coordinate transform. The result is a hybrid force-vision controller which does not need any a-priori robot, camera, object or environment models. The approach is validated experimentally using an IMI Zebra robot arm.