AUTONOMOUS GUIDED

VEHICLES

Submitted by
SIDHARTHAN S
Roll.no 31
 CONTENT

• INTRODUCTION
• AGV ARCHITECTURE
• COMPONENTS BASED DCS VIEW
• MAN MACHINE INTERFACE
• DESIGN WITH FIELD BUS TECHNOLOGY
• CONCLUSION
 INTRODUCTION

Mobile robots sometimes called Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGVs) are currently used
for transporting material in industry, warehouses and underground mining and are also developed
for exploration of the oceans and space, etc. A major activity of current development on AGVs is
navigation and control. Inherent in any navigation scheme is the desire to reach a destination
without getting lost or colliding with obstacle.
An AGV in its environment without getting lost is a fundamental problem for path
planning and control. In practice it is very difficult to obtain an accurate position measurement for
a non-stationary AGV, because it is impossible to measure several points at the same time and there
are many disturbances in the environment.
 AGV ARCHITECTURE

The control system in the vehicle is essentially distributed according to the

physical location of the electrical components and control software. In terms of its control
architecture, the complete vehicle is based on a distributed control design concept. The purpose of
the distributed approach is to facilitate ease of maintenance, system modification and
improvement, combined with faster customization when required.
 COMPONENTS BASED DCS VIEW

Components-based design concept can be seen as the suitable approach to design the control systems for the AGV due mainly to:
• The control system in the vehicle is distributed
• The global task of the vehicle consists of the sequence of interacting tasks for controlling drives,navigation and
behaviour.
• Each task is considered and solved on the appropriate control modules in terms of components.

For example, the entire control system can be classified into four compound components (Compound components can
further be divided into many components.) namely;
(1) servo-drive control component
(2) tactical control component,
(3) strategic control components,
(4) sensing components.
 MAN MACHINE INTERFACE

The man-machine interface (MMI) capabilities, which exploit the features of the
integrated PC and distributed control network, represent a distinctive feature of the AGV. Control nodes
are configured for particular interface functions (programmable switch panels, special displays, and so
on). The PC- based supervision tools facilitate multiple level of system access, enabling sophisticated
diagnostics and maintenance support.
A standard industrial PC using the operating system could be used to perform
supervisory,monitoring and display functions. For example, the status of the battery condition can be
monitored and accessed by the PC to provide information to the operator. The current position of the
lifting and rotating mechanisms on the load unit can be monitored continuously and displayed on the PC
monitor.The PC can be used to record and analyse historical performance data and with the aid of
network development tools, to extend or modify the vehicle control functions as required.
 DESIGN WITH FIELD BUS TECHNOLOGY

Fieldbus systems can be used for the realisation of AGV control adopting components-
based DCS philosophy. LonWorks is a proprietary fieldbus system developed by Echelon
Corporation, USA.Echelon’s LonWorks system is compliance with the ISO seven-layer model. This
system includes all the elements required to design, deploy and support DCS. It is worth to mention
that LonWorks is an underlying architecture with which fully-fledged DCS can be built.
The basic elements are; protocol(LonTalk protocol), processor (Neuron chip), transceiver,
I/O interfacing (A/D, D/A converter), tool for developing control code (NodeBuilder) and
application for serving as Network Management Tools (NMT).
DESIGN WITH FIELD BUS TECHNOLOGY (Contd)

The field devices such as sensors, actuators etc. can communicate each other for
control level interaction via Neuron chip-based node by the use of LonTalk protocol. Neuron chip is
a 8-bit VLSI microcontroller that executes the control task at the field level and can interact with
other Neuron chip-based node within the control network.
The connections among the Neuron chips (off-line design) are made with the help of
NMTs. The control code for the devices can be written in Neuron C language; a derivative of ANSI
C and can be downloaded after being developed, complied and debugged by a software called
NodeBuilder
 CONCLUSION

Hence it concluded that AGVS plays a major role in engineering industries to mass
production factory with large area to improve the material handling technique to faster rate,
Increase efficiency and minimize the transportation costs and time.
Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are self-driven vehicles. Early types of AGVS were
introduced around 1954. They are used to transport material from one location on the facility floor
to another without any accompanying operator, and are widely used in material handling systems,
flexible manufacturing systems, and container handling applications. With the advance of
technology, more sophisticated machines are available, which considerably reduce machining and
internal setup time
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