Method and stereo vision system for facilitating the unloading of agricultural material from a vehicle

A system for facilitating the transfer of agricultural material from a transferring vehicle to a receiving vehicle, the system comprising:

• a receiving vehicle comprising a propelled portion for propelling the receiving vehicle and a storage portion for storing agricultural material;
• a spout operably connected to a transferring material for transferring the agricultural material to the receiving vehicle;
• a stereo imaging device facing towards the storage portion of the receiving vehicle, the imaging device collecting image data to determine three dimensional coordinates of the spout in the image data;
• an image processing module comprising a container module and a spout module;
• the container module for determining a container position of a container perimeter or the container position of the storage portion, where the container position comprises a reference point or three dimensional coordinates;
• the spout module for identifying the spout of the transferring vehicle in the collected image data by applying edge detection in a region of discontinuities in pixel color or pixel intensity in the collected image data to identify edges of the spout to provide an angular orientation of the spout with respect to the transferring vehicle;
• and
• an alignment module for determining the relative position of the spout and the container based on the collected image data and for generating command data or user interface data for the receiving vehicle with a target spatial offset between the spout and the container perimeter, the command data or user interface data being for placement of the spout and storage portion in relative cooperative alignment within a central zone of the container perimeter or target alignment of a target area of the storage portion, for transferring of material from the transferring vehicle to the receiving vehicle.