Autonomous Load Transport Vehicle Obstacle Sensing and Positioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Autonomous material transport vehicles face challenges in navigating around obstacles and identifying intended targets within their environment, requiring effective collision avoidance and load positioning mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
An autonomous material transport vehicle system equipped with a sensing system and a processor that monitors the environment, determines the location of a load, and executes collision avoidance maneuvers by adjusting speed, path, or terminating power to avoid obstacles, using image segmentation and neural networks for accurate load detection and positioning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the vehicle operates at higher speed to improve productivity, then the detection range must be extended to maintain collision avoidance capability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the detection range in the spatial dimension by deploying additional sensors at strategic locations on the vehicle. This allows the system to maintain collision avoidance capability at higher speeds by detecting obstacles earlier and from multiple angular perspectives, effectively compensating for the reduced reaction time at higher velocities.
2Reliability
If the detection range is extended to improve collision avoidance, then the vehicle can operate at higher speeds, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs multi-functional sensors that serve both collision avoidance and load identification purposes. The same sensing system monitors for obstacles in the detection range and identifies loads at loading locations, reducing the need for separate specialized systems and thereby limiting the increase in overall system complexity despite the extended detection range.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If the vehicle terminates power to avoid obstacles, then collision safety is improved, but the response time to reach the load location increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection of obstacles within the detection range before the vehicle reaches critical proximity to the load location. By identifying obstacles early in the trajectory, the control system can plan avoidance maneuvers that minimize interruption to the loading operation, reducing the time loss compared to reactive stopping at the last moment.
Data Source
AI summary
The various embodiments described herein generally relate to an autonomous material transport vehicle, and systems and methods for operating an autonomous material transport vehicle. The autonomous material transport vehicle comprises: a sensing system operable to monitor an environment of the vehicle; a drive system for operating the vehicle; a processor operable to: receive a location of a load; initiate the drive system to navigate the vehicle to the location; following initiation of the drive system, operate the sensing system to monitor for one or more objects within a detection range; and in response to the sensing system detecting the one or more objects within the detection range, determine whether the load is within the detection range; and when the load is within the detection range, operate the drive system to position the vehicle for transporting the load, otherwise, determine a collision avoidance operation to avoid the one or more objects.