A Study on Robust Finite-Time Visual Servoing with a Gyro-Stabilized Surveillance System

This article presents the design and validation of a novel visual servoing scheme for a surveillance system. In this system, a two-axis gimbal mechanism operates the rotation of a camera which is able to provide visual information on the tracked target for the control system. The control objective is to bring the target’s projection to the center of the image plane with the smallest steady-state error and a smooth transient response, even with the unpredictable motion of the target and the influence of external disturbances. To fulfill these tasks, the proposed control scheme is designed consisting of two parts: (1) an observer estimates simultaneously the matched and unmatched disturbances; and (2) a motion control law guarantees the finite-time stability and visual servoing performance. Finally, experiments are conducted for validation and evaluation. The proposed control system shows its consistency and ought to perform better than previous approaches.