Neuro-heuristic Pallet Detection for Automated Guided Vehicle Navigation

Automated guided vehicles (AGV) allow for the automation of operations in warehouse environments. From an application point of view, vehicles can use sensors to move and perform a variety of tasks, including moving objects. In this paper, we focus on the analysis of the environment and the preparation of data for vehicle navigation. The proposed solution is based on two paths of action. In the first, the image of the room is processed by heuristics to locate the robot’s target - the palette. The found pattern allows one to locate the destination as well as create a mask. The mask can be used to train the U-Net network. When a network is trained, the use of heuristics for pallet location can be omitted. Locating the target allows the image to be processed to obtain an AGV navigation map. The proposed solution based on heuristics and U-Net networks has been described and tested in simulations to indicate the potential of the proposed approach.