Automatic visual guidance of a forklift engaging a pallet

This paper presents the development of a prototype vision-guided forklift system for the automatic engagement of pallets. The system is controlled using the visual guidance method of mobile camera-space manipulation, which is capable of achieving a high level of precision in positioning and orienting mobile manipulator robots without relying on camera calibration. The paper contains development of the method, the development of a prototype forklift as well as experimental results in actual pallet engagement tasks. The technology could be added to AGV systems enabling them to engage arbitrarily located pallets. It also could be added to standard forklifts as an operator assist capability.

[1]  Y. J. Tejwani,et al.  Robot vision , 1989, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems,.

[2]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  High-precision visual control of mobile manipulators , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[3]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  A camera space control system for an automated forklift , 1994, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[4]  Michael J. Seelinger,et al.  An alternative approach for image-plane control of robots , 1997, Block Island Workshop on Vision and Control.

[5]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  Nonholonomic camera-space manipulation , 1992, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[6]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  Three-Dimensional Camera Space Manipulation , 1990, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[8]  Umesh A. Korde,et al.  Application of a Precision-Enhancing Measure in 3D Rigid-Body Positioning Using Camera-Space Manipulation , 1997, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[9]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  Reference path description for an autonomous powered wheelchair , 1994, Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  SUSAN—A New Approach to Low Level Image Processing , 1997, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[11]  Ricardo Swain Oropeza,et al.  Motion control using visual servoing and potential fields for a rover-mounted manipulator , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[12]  Patrick Rives,et al.  Applying visual servoing techniques to control a mobile hand-eye system , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[13]  Steven B. Skaar,et al.  Camera-Space Manipulation , 1987 .

[14]  Eric T. Baumgartner,et al.  An autonomous vision-based mobile robot , 1994, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control..

[15]  R. Y. Tsai,et al.  An Efficient and Accurate Camera Calibration Technique for 3D Machine Vision , 1986, CVPR 1986.

[16]  Patrick Rives,et al.  Extending visual servoing techniques to nonholonomic mobile robots , 1997, Block Island Workshop on Vision and Control.

[17]  Hanqi Zhuang,et al.  Simultaneous calibration of a robot and a hand-mounted camera , 1993, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[18]  Ju-Jang Lee,et al.  Explicit Path Tracking by Autonomous Vehicles , 1992, Robotica.

[19]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Behavior-based mobile manipulation for drum sampling , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[20]  H. Seraji.  Configuration control of rover-mounted manipulators , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Control and Applications.