移動式機械手臂乃由一座移動平台、一部機械手臂及一套視覺系統所組成，其非常適合在少量多樣之生產線上，進行物料的搬運。如此具彈性的搬運系統不只可以節省人力，尚且符合一些工作所須之潔淨度的要求，因此，在半導體廠及液晶顯示器面板廠的生產線上，其被廣泛地使用於物料的搬運。
移動式機械手臂在工作站之間進行物料搬運時，機械手臂主要是藉由移動平台的導航控制系統將其驅動至工作站，但由於地面的不平坦，以及移動平台的定位誤差，所以，於移動式機械手臂到站後，移動平台與工作站間，有著不可避免的位置與方位誤差。因此，本研究利用一未經校準之眼在手視覺系統，來導引移動平台上之機械手臂，抓取置放在工作台上的工件，並提出視覺導引控制策略，其主要是依據所選取的影像特徵及以影像為基礎之看而後動的控制架構。在控制架構中所使用之控制法則，主要是利用最小平方近似法離線估測的影像特徵空間與卡式座標空間之轉換關係。而在影像處理方面，提出不需特殊打光下，快速求解出物體的轉角及形心之演算法。
在論文最後，以控制機械手臂之端接器，接近並抓取置於工作站上不同所在之工件，進行實驗來評估眼在手之機械手臂之定位性能。實驗結果顯示，所提出之視覺導引控制策略，能確保移動式機械手臂可以直接行駛於任二工作台間，而不需特別於中間停下來修正移動平台之定位誤差，並於到站後，可在不平坦的地面及不使用特殊打光之條件下，執行取放任務。

Mobile manipulators, which consist of a mobile base and a robot manipulator equipped with a vision system, are appropriate for transferring small quantities of a range of different materials in production lines. Such a flexible material transfer system not only saves human resources, but also meets the requirements of cleanliness associated with some tasks. Consequently, they are extensively used to transport material in semiconductor or LCD panel production lines.
When transferring material from one station to another, a mobile manipulator is controlled to reach a station by the guidance control system of the mobile base. Position and orientation errors of the mobile base relative to the station are inevitably caused by the non-horizontality of the ground and positioning errors of the mobile base. Hence, this study utilizes an uncalibrated eye-in-hand vision system to provide visual information for controlling the manipulator mounted on the mobile base, to pick up a workpiece located on the station. A vision-guided control strategy is proposed. It is based on selected image features and an image-based look-and-move control structure. The control law employed in the control structure is based mainly on the off-line estimate of the trasformation from feature space to Cartesian space using the least squares estimation algorithm. Image processing algorithms are also proposed to increase the perception capability of rapidly detecting the corners and centroid of a silhouette captured by the vision system without any special lighting.
Finally, the positioning performance of the eye-in-hand manipulator is experimentally evaluated by controlling the end-effector of the manipulator to approach and grasp the workpiece in various locations on a station. The experimental results reveal that the proposed vision-guided control strategy ensures that the mobile manipulator can travel from one station to another without in-between stops and can perform pick-and-place operations on a non-planar ground without any special lighting.

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