In outdoor unmanned forklift unloading scenarios, pallet detection and localization face challenges posed by uncontrollable lighting conditions. Furthermore, the stacking and close arrangement of pallets also increase the difficulty of positioning a target pallet. To solve these problems, a method for high-precision positioning and rotation angle estimation for a target pallet using the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and vision is proposed. Deep dual-resolution networks (DDRNets) are used to segment the pallet from depth images and RGB images. Then, keypoints for calculating the position and rotation angle are extracted and further combined with the 3D point cloud data to achieve accurate pallet positioning. Constraining the pixel coordinates and depth coordinates of the center point of the pallet and setting the priority of the pallet according to the unloading direction allow the target pallet to be identified from multiple pallets. The positioning of the target pallet in the forklift navigation coordinate system is achieved by integrating BDS positioning data through coordinate transformation. This method is robust in response to lighting influences and can accurately locate the target pallet. The experimental results show that the pallet positioning error is less than 20 mm, and the rotation angle error is less than 0.37°, which meets the accuracy requirements for automated forklift operations.

Centimeter-level localization and rotation angle estimation of flatbed trucks are major problems in unmanned forklift automated loading scenes. To solve it, this study proposes a method for high-precision positioning and rotation angle estimation of flatbed trucks based on BeiDou and vision. First, an unmanned forklift equipped with a ToF camera and double antenna mobile receiver for BeiDou positioning collects depth images and localization data near the front and rear endpoints of the flatbed. Then DDRNet-23-slim was used to segment the flatbed from the depth image and extract the straight lines at the edges of the flatbed using the Hough transform and compute the set of intersection points of the lines. A neighborhood feature vector was designed to locate the endpoint of a flatbed from a set of intersection points by feature screening. Finally, the relative coordinates of the endpoints were converted to a customized forklift navigation coordinate system by BeiDou positioning, and rotation angle estimation was performed by the front and rear endpoints. Experiments showed that the endpoint positioning error was less than 3 cm and the rotation angle estimation error was less than 0.1°. The precision of the method meets the demand for automated flatbed truck loading by unmanned forklifts.

Centimeter-level localization and precise rotation angle estimation for flatbed trucks pose significant challenges in unmanned forklift automated loading scenarios. To address this issue, the study proposed a method for high-precision positioning and rotation angle estimation of flatbed trucks using the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and vision technology. First, an unmanned forklift equipped with a Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera and a dual-antenna mobile receiver for BDS positioning collected depth images and localization data near the front and rear endpoints of the flatbed. The Deep Dual-Resolution Network-23-slim (DDRNet-23-slim) model was used to segment the flatbed from the depth image and extract the straight lines at the edges of the flatbed using the Hough transform. The algorithm then computed the set of intersection points of the lines. A neighborhood feature vector was designed to identify the endpoint of a flatbed from a set of intersection points using feature screening. Finally, the relative coordinates of the endpoints were converted to a customized forklift navigation coordinate system by BDS positioning. A rotation angle estimation was then performed using the endpoints at the front and rear. Experiments showed that the endpoint positioning error was less than 3 cm, and the rotation angle estimation error was less than 0.3°, which verified the validity and reliability of the method.