A 3D-robot vision system for automatic unloading of containers

Abstract

Unloading of standard containers within logistic processes is mainly performed manually. Amongst gripping technology, the development of a robot vision system for recognizing different shaped logistic goods is a major technical obstacle for developing robotic systems for automatic unloading of containers. Goods can be arbitrarily placed inside a container and the resulting packaging scenarios usually have a high degree of occlusion. Existing systems and approaches use range information acquired by laser scanners for recognizing and localizing goods inside of containers. They are restricted to a single shape class of goods and often have limited size ranges for goods. This paper presents a robot vision for recognizing and localizing differently shaped and sized objects in piled packaging scenarios using range data acquired by different kinds of range sensors. After a specific segmentation step, different shaped partial surfaces are detected and classified in point cloud data and combined to complete logistic goods. The system is evaluated with real and simulated sensor data from different packaging scenarios.