Adaptive exposure control for image-based visual-servo systems using local gradient information

We present anew method for automatic adjustment of camera exposure time for visual-servo systems. The proposed method can improve the robustness of image processing in a high-dynamic-range environment. In this paper, we evaluate an appropriate exposure time by computing the local gradient information of a target area, allowing a camera to capture images without losing target features under artificially adjusted illumination conditions. To validate the advantage of the proposed method, an evaluation is made using an off-the-shelf visual-servo system with a machine vision camera. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, which improves the performance of the target recognition algorithm. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America