Vision-based Waypoints Tracking Control for an Amphibious Spherical Robot

The localization plays an important role in the motion control and trajectory tracking of amphibious spherical robot. However, due to the complex environment in the water, some methods localization on land such as GPS cannot be applied to amphibious spherical robot. Therefore, a new method is needed to locate the amphibious spherical robot. This paper proposes an image recognition method using a global camera to locate the robot. In this method, the global camera is mounted on a platform with a known position, and the computer vision algorithm is used to identify the position of the amphibious spherical robot in the image, then calculate the coordinates and moving speed of the amphibious spherical robot. We applied this method to an amphibious spherical robot and verified it experimentally. In the experiment, the amphibious spherical robot can swim along the set rectangular trajectory by using this localization method, indicating that this localization method is effective.