Crown Equipment Corporation

Mark Bell

Stuart Park

Ralf Haeusler

Lucas B Waltz

Kashyap Chandrasekar

Jacob Jay Thomson

Junli Tao

Jacob Thomson

Vehicles, systems, and methods for navigating or tracking the navigation of a materials handling vehicle along a surface that may include a camera and vehicle functions to match two-dimensional image information from camera data associated with the input image of overhead features with a plurality of global target locations of a warehouse map to generate a plurality of candidate optical targets, an optical target associated with each global target location and a code; filter the targets to determine a candidate optical target; decode the target to identify the associated code; identify an optical target associated with the identified code; determine a camera metric relative to the identified optical target and the position and orientation of the identified optical target in the warehouse map; calculate a vehicle pose based on the camera metric; and navigate the materials handling vehicle utilizing the vehicle pose.

Systems and methods for optical target based indoor vehicle navigation

An industrial vehicle is provided comprising a drive mechanism, a steering mechanism, a vehicle controller, a camera, and a navigation module. The camera is communicatively coupled to the navigation module, the vehicle controller is responsive to commands from the navigation module, and the drive mechanism and the steering mechanism are responsive to commands from the vehicle controller. The camera is configured to capture an input image of a warehouse ceiling comprising elongated skylights, isolated ceiling lights, and/or active optical targets. The navigation module is configured to distinguish between the ceiling lights and the skylights and send commands to the vehicle controller for localization, or to navigate the industrial vehicle through the warehouse based upon valid ceiling light identification, valid skylight identification, valid active target identification, or combinations thereof.

Industrial vehicle with feature-based localization and navigation

An industrial vehicle is provided comprising a drive mechanism, a steering mechanism, a vehicle controller, a camera, and a navigation module. The camera is communicatively coupled to the navigation module, the vehicle controller is responsive to commands from the navigation module, and the drive mechanism and the steering mechanism are responsive to commands from the vehicle controller. The camera is configured to capture an input image of a warehouse ceiling comprising elongated skylights characterized by different rates of image intensity change along longitudinal and transverse axial directions, and ceiling lights characterized by a circularly symmetric rate of image intensity change. The navigation module is configured to distinguish between the ceiling lights and the skylights and send commands to the vehicle controller for localization, or to navigate the industrial vehicle through the warehouse based upon valid ceiling light identification, valid skylight identification, or both.

According to the embodiments described herein, a method for environmental based localization may include capturing an input image of a ceiling comprising a plurality of skylights. Features can be extracted from the input image. The features can be grouped into a plurality of feature groups such that each of the feature groups is associated with one of the skylights. Line segments can be extracted from the features of each feature group, automatically, with one or more processors executing a feature extraction algorithm on each feature group separately. At least two selected lines of the line segments of each feature groups can be selected. A centerline for each of the feature groups can be determined based at least in part upon the two selected lines. The center line of each of the feature groups can be associated with one of the skylights.

Industrial vehicles with overhead light based localization

According to the embodiments described herein, an industrial vehicle can include a camera and one or more processors. The camera can capture an input image of ceiling lights of the ceiling of the warehouse. The one or more processors can execute machine readable instructions to detect transversal edges from the ceiling lights of the input image. The machine readable instructions executed by the one or more processors can determine points of convergence between the transversal edges and a first edge line and a second edge line. The machine readable instructions executed by the one or more processors can select a set of point fixes from the points of convergence. The machine readable instructions executed by the one or more processors can navigate the industrial vehicle through the warehouse utilizing the centerline and the set of point fixes.

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Auckland, New Zealand

Mark Bell