Ground Rover Visual Servo Control for Drone Alignment

An aerial drone and ground robot collaboration provides a swift and safe post-operation rover retrieval for volcano-exploring robot systems. However, this setup requires an accurate servo control method that aligns the rover below the aerial drone. Thus, this paper presents a ground rover servoing method using ArUco marker-based visual servoing program.The program calculates the distance between an ArUco marker and the rover through camera-based distance calculation. The calculated distance serves as a basis for the rover’s forward movement. Experiments from this study confirmed the rover’s capability in maneuvering towards the ArUco marker and below the aerial drone. The program’s distance calculation yielded an average distance error of 4.12 cm, while test results from visual servo control produced an average position error of 2.51 cm.