[GeeTwo]

We don't have anything working yet, but our physical pickup is similar to the Greenhorn's Ri3d, but with a "rake" gripper that works like a contour gauge, and a passive "foot". This is optimized for long-side pickup and a bottom-stack, so we're going to try tracking the long side first. We took a few stills with the KOP camera, and using the edge detection algorithms in the latest version of imagemagick to identify those stacking tabs and the corrugations certainly seems promising. We have figured out that we want to get the camera in the 30fps mode, which cuts the screen resolution in half. Even at 640 pixels, though, you can still have 1mm resolution with the whole tote in the field of view.

If we do get this working well enough, we will go for a tote-stack auto routine - drive in rough with the vision targets, line up close with the edge detector, lift, and back up a few feet. Repeat twice, then dash to the auto zone and deliver. We have also purchased some decent range finders (the cheap ultrasonics have a 1" resolution) to get close enough to grab by the lip.

We're also playing with tricks like casting light from different directions, to cast shadows onto the tote.