Variable Pallet Pick-Up for Automatic Guided Vehicles in Industrial Environments

This paper presents two laser scanner based approaches to locate and pick-up pallets with the aim of automating forklift trucks. In contrast to camera based systems our approaches are independent of luminance conditions which can be highly variable in industrial environments. Whereas one approach uses pallets modified with adhesive reflectors which enables very flexible handling of pallets, the second approach detects pallets based on geometric characteristics without any modifications to the environment. Experimental results are also reported including a run of an autonomous fork-lift truck presented at the logistics fair CeMAT 2005 in Hannover.