Trajectory generation of an unmanned forklift for autonomous operation in material handling system

In this paper, a trajectory generation algorithm for the development of an unmanned autonomous forklift is discussed. A kinematic model of the forklift with a spin-turn steering mechanism in the inertial frame is described first, and then the model is transformed to a chained form. A polynomial control input for the trajectory generation of the unmanned forklift is derived based on the obtained chained form model. The effectiveness of the proposed trajectory generation algorithm is examined through simulations of trajectory generation of the unmanned forklift between two arbitrary configurations.