Automated Guided Vehicles

Automated guided vehicle systems (AGVs), normally known as driverless vehicles, are turning out to be a significant part of the automated manufacturing system. Along with the shift from mass production to mid-volume & mid-variety, flexible manufacturing systems, are increasingly in use. They need not only machine flexibility but also material- handling, storage, and retrieval flexibility. Therefore, the importance of AGVs has developed in manifold. It is a battery-powered driverless vehicle along programming capabilities for destination, path selection, and positioning.

The AGVs associated to a class of highly flexible, intelligent, & versatile material-handling systems utilized to transport materials from several loading locations to several unloading locations throughout the facility. The capability associated to collision avoidance is nicely inbuilt in AGVS. Though, the vehicle comes to a dead stop before any damage is made to materials, personnel or structures. These are becoming an integral part of flexible manufacturing system installations.

Today, AGVS are versatile in nature and possess flexible material-handling system. They utilize modern microprocessor technology to guide a vehicle along with a prescribed path and apply correction if the vehicle strays from the path. A system controller attains instructions directly from the host computer, communicates with other vehicles, and issues suitable commands to each vehicle. To ignore collision, communication is essential among the AGVs. In order to facilitate the communication, they are linked through a wire in the floor or by radio.