A Vision-Based Method for Detecting the Position of Stacked Goods in Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems

Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) play a crucial role in modern logistics, yet effectively monitoring cargo stacking patterns remains challenging. While computer vision and deep learning offer promising solutions, existing methods struggle to balance detection accuracy, computational efficiency, and environmental adaptability. This paper proposes a novel machine vision-based detection algorithm that integrates a pallet surface object detection network (STEGNet) with a box edge detection algorithm. STEGNet's core innovation is the Efficient Gated Pyramid Feature Network (EG-FPN), which integrates a Gated Feature Fusion module and a Lightweight Attention Mechanism to optimize feature extraction and fusion. In addition, we introduce a geometric constraint method for box edge detection and employ a Perspective-n-Point (PnP)-based 2D-to-3D transformation approach for precise pose estimation. Experimental results show that STEGNet achieves 93.49% mAP on our proposed GY Warehouse Box View 4-Dimension (GY-WSBW-4D) dataset and 83.2% mAP on the WSGID-B dataset, surpassing existing benchmarks. The lightweight variant maintains competitive accuracy while reducing the model size by 34% and increasing the inference speed by 68%. In practical applications, the system achieves pose estimation with a Mean Absolute Error within 4 cm and a Rotation Angle Error below 2°, demonstrating robust performance in complex warehouse environments. This research provides a reliable solution for automated cargo stack monitoring in modern logistics systems.