Abstract
This paper focuses on autonomous navigation for an electric freight vehicle designed to collect freight autonomously using pallet handling robots installed in the vehicle. Apart from autonomous vehicle navigation, the primary hurdle for vehicle autonomy is the autonomous collection of freight irrespective of freight orientation/location. This research focuses on generating parking pose for the vehicle irrespective of the orientation of freight for its autonomous collection. Freight orientation is calculated by capturing the freight through onboard sensors. Afterward, this information creates a parking pose using mathematical equations and knowledge of the vehicle and freight collection limitations. Separate parking spots are generated for separate loading bays of the vehicle depending on the availability of the loading bay. Finally, results are captured and verified for different orientations of freight to conclude the research.
Highlights
Energies 2021, 14, 4677. https://Vehicle FURBOT (Freight Urban RoBOTic vehicle) is a complete drive-by-wire electric freight vehicle designed to operate in last-mile delivery operations in an urban environment.The vehicle was part of the European Green Vehicles Initiative (EGVI) funded under the umbrella of the FP7-Transport European project ending in December 2015 [1,2]
This research is a step towards an autonomous collection of freight for the vehicle, especially the part of creating autonomous parking pose w.r.t freight keeping in line the constraints posed by vehicle FURBOT
By using the mathematical equations and notations discussed in the previous section, the node for the vehicle parking spot was run and tested to verify if the parking spot is generated according to the loading bays
Summary
Vehicle FURBOT (Freight Urban RoBOTic vehicle) is a complete drive-by-wire electric freight vehicle designed to operate in last-mile delivery operations in an urban environment. As FURBOT is a designated freight handling vehicle, the parking solution for autonomous loading of freight needs to be resolved. This research exploits geometrical equations after freight detection to generate a parking pose that can solve the autonomous freight collection problem. Previous research in this domain is not available, i.e., the generation of parking pose for a freight handling vehicle for freight collection. This research is a step towards an autonomous collection of freight for the vehicle, especially the part of creating autonomous parking pose w.r.t freight keeping in line the constraints posed by vehicle FURBOT.
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