• The Journal of Natural Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.87-93
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• 1992

A robotically assisted field material handling system designed for loading and unloading of a planar pallet with a forklift in unstructured field environment is presented. The system uses combined acoustic/visual sensing data to define the position/orientation of the pallet and to determine the specific locations of the two slots of the pallet, so that the forklift can move close to the slot and engage it for transport. In order to reduce the complexity of the material handling operation, we have developed a method based on the integration of 2-D range data of Poraloid ultrasonic sensor along with 2-D visual data of an optical camera. Data obtained from the two separate sources complements each other and is used in an efficient algorithm to control this robotically assisted field material handling system . Range data obtained from two linear scannings is used to determine the pan and tilt angles of a pallet using least mean square method. Then 2-D visual data is used to determine the swing angle and engagement location of a pallet by using edge detection and Hough transform techniques. The limitations of the pan and tilt orientation to be determined arc discussed. The system developed is evaluated through the hardware and software implementation. The experimental results are presented.