In spring 2009 I worked on contract project to build prototype software to plug in an electric vehicle charging connector into the socket on the vehicle. The hardware consisted of a 3-DOF robotic arm with a mid-range Logitech web camera mounted on the end effector. The algorithm scanned the camera image for a high-visibility target of known shape and size, computed the 3-d position in space relative to the end-effector and the inverse-kinematics to perform the plug-in action.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2LAwxoQeIZiMTIwQjEwNTRFMjlDMkY2OTowLjM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2LAwxoQeIZiMTIwQjEwNTRFMjlDMkY2OTowLjI/view?usp=sharing