Vision-based operations of a large industrial vehicle: Autonomous hot metal carrier

Hot Metal Carriers (HMCs) are large forklift-type vehicles used to move molten metal in aluminium smelters. This paper reports on field experiments that demonstrate that HMCs can operate autonomously and in particular can use vision as a primary sensor to locate the load of aluminium. We present our complete system but focus on the vision system elements and also detail experiments demonstrating reliable operation of the materials handling task. Two key experiments are described lasting two and five hours where the HMC travelled 15km in total and handled the load 80 times.