Navigation in a Box: Stereovision for Industry Automation

Abstract

Advances in Theory and Applications of Stereo Vision 256 to provide autonomous transportations in industrial sites, (Danaher Motion, Corecon, Omnitech robotic, Egemin Automation), and in service environments like hospitals (TransCar AGV by Swisslog, ALTIS by FMC and MLR). These systems mainly rely on bidimensional views from conventional laser based sensors and need pre-defined maps of the environment. As a consequence they show very low flexibility to environment changes. On the other hand, in outdoor environments, AGVs mainly rely on high-precision global positioning systems (GPS) and predefined maps. One classical example is represented by the construction vehicles field. The current generation of autonomous hauler trucks (the Front Runner system from Komatsu shown in Fig. Information on target course and speed is sent wirelessly from the supervisory computer, while the GPS is used to obtain the position. The architecture is rather classical for outdoor robotics navigation, and makes use of conventional sensors that are costly and do not provide complete 3D information about shapes and obstacles. Moreover, the navigation quality is strongly dependent on the GPS precision, and cannot be used in indoor environments or near buildings. There exist also several mining loaders on the market, from different manufacturers, like Atlas Copco, Sandvik, and Caterpillar that are semiautonomous with very simple trajectory following techniques, and normally remote controlled while loading and unloading.