Methods and systems for detecting, recognizing, and localizing pallets

A robotic device, comprising:

• a sensor coupled to the robotic device;
• and
• a control system configured to;
• receive sensor data representing aspects of an environment, wherein the sensor data includes depth measurements of the environment from a three-dimensional (3D) camera;
• identify a set of edge points in the sensor data, wherein identifying the set of edge points in the sensor data involves:
• (i) determining a cluster of local neighborhood data points in an depth image from the 3D camera, (ii) determining depth measurements of data points in the cluster of local neighborhood data points, and (iii) identifying data points of the cluster of local neighborhood data points that correspond to edge points based on the determined depth measurements;
• determine a set of line segments from the set of edge points, wherein each line segment is fit to a subset of the set of edge points;
• filter the set of line segments to exclude line segments that have a length outside a height range and a width range associated with dimensions of a pallet template;
• identify, from the filtered set of line segments, a subset of line segments that align with the pallet template;
• and
• determine a pose of a pallet in the environment based on the identified subset of line segments.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored therein program instructions executable by a computing system to cause the computing system to perform operations, the operations comprising:

• receiving sensor data representing aspects of an environment;
• identifying a set of edge points in the sensor data, wherein identifying the set of edge points involves:
• (i) determining a first local surface normal relative to a surface represented in a cluster of data points in the sensor data and a second local surface normal relative to the surface represented in the cluster of data points, and (ii) identifying data points in the cluster of data points that correspond to edge points based on the first local surface normal and the second local surface normal;
• determining a set of line segments from the set of edge points, wherein each line segment is fit to a subset of the set of edge points;
• filtering the set of line segments to exclude line segments that have a length outside a height range and a width range associated with dimensions of a pallet template;
• identifying, from the filtered set of line segments, a subset of line segments that align with the pallet template;
• and
• determining a pose of a pallet in the environment based on the identified subset of line segments.