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. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.