Abstract: In accordance with the present invention, a system to organize and coordinate components associated with earthmoving machinery capable of performing excavating and loading tasks autonomously is disclosed. The system comprises an earthmoving machine equipped with a scanning sensor system operable to provide data regarding regions within an earthmoving environment including an excavation region and a loading region and a planning and control module operable to receive data from the scanning sensor system to plan a task associated with the control of the earthmoving machine while concurrently performing another task associated with control of the earthmoving machine. Any number and type of sensor systems, such as a laser rangefinder or a radar rangefinder, may be incorporated in the system depending on requirements and the capabilities of the system.

Abstract: The first step in processing three dimensional range data for a vision system of a robot is feature extraction such as planar segmentation. When the sensors used to obtain the range data are mounted on a platform which moves during data acquisition, inter scanline connectivity cannot be relied upon. Therefore, line segments are detected and merged in each scanline and then line segments of different scanlines are merged to form planes. Both merging steps use a least squares threshold. To speed processing, the viewing area is broken into cells and comparisons are made only between cells adjacent to a cell of interest. The resulting planes undergo conventional hypothesis generation and verification.