Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University ›› 2019, Vol. 53 ›› Issue (2): 197-202.doi: 10.16183/j.cnki.jsjtu.2019.02.010

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Pallet Detection Based on Contour Matching for Warehouse Robots

WU Wenhan,YANG Ming,WANG Bing,WANG Chunxiang   

  1. a. Department of Automation; b. Shanghai Key Lab of Navigation and Location Services; c. Research Institute of Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • Online:2019-02-28 Published:2019-02-28

Abstract: Pallet detection is the key step of cargo handling for warehouse robots. A pallet detection method based on point clouds plane contour matching is proposed to solve the current detection method problems that are not robust to illumination and relative position between the pallet and sensor. Point clouds generated by time-of-flight (ToF) camera are filtered and segmented to different planes using region-growing method constrained by surface normal. Then point clouds are projected to the grid image along the plane’s principle normal direction. Fusion contour feature of Hu moment invariants and scale feature extracted from grid image contour is applied for similarity matching between the target and template pallet contour. The experimental results show that the method has high recognition rate and strong robustness under the circumstance of complex illumination, uncertain distance and relative pose between the pallet and sensor.

Key words: pallet detection, time-of-flight (ToF) camera, Hu moment invariants, contour matching

CLC Number: