AUTOMATED GUIDED VEHICLE

Abstract:
AGV stands for AUTOMATED GUIDED VEHICLE. It is an autonomous robotic vehicle which
can move over the industry shop floor without any manual aid. The vehicle has sensors mounted
on it which help the vehicle to traverse its path from one work station to another. The sensors not
only help the vehicle to traverse the path but also help the vehicle to halt at a particular
workstation for required job processing time.

The sensors are mounted below AGV which detect the presence of path printed on industry shop
floor. The output of sensors it fed to microcontroller which processes the data and signal the
drive train to actuate accordingly.

This reduces the material handling time and errors involved in material handling, making
material handling more mistake proof. This in turn increases the efficiency of production system
and thus reduces the cost of production.

Keywords: Automated Guided Vehicle, Sensors, Microcontroller, Path printed, efficiency.

Introduction
Material handling is the most important process in converting raw material into finished product.
As the demand increases it becomes more and more tedious to transfer material efficiently from
one work station to another
As human behavior is prone to error making there is need for an autonomous system which can
transfer material from one workstation to another without delay and errors. This can be achieved
by using an AGV for moving material from one work station to another.

AGV stands for automated guided vehicle. As the name suggests it is fully autonomous, on chip
computer guided vehicle with zero manual intervention. In other words AGV is an autonomous
robotic vehicle which can trace the path printed on industry shop floor and navigate along the
path from one workstation to another. It works just like a robot as it is able to sense and response
to the environment.
The aim of this project is to build a prototype of an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) model
that can move on a flat surface. The prototype is able to follow line on floor with the
microcontroller as it main brain that control all the navigation and responses to the environment.
The ability to follow line on floor is an advantage of this prototype as it can be further developed
to do more complicated task in real life. To follow the line, the microcontroller is attached to a
sensor that continuously reflecting to the surface condition. Therefore, this project involves of
designing and fabrication of the hardware and circuitry.

Objective:

The main objective of the project is to design and fabricate the prototype of Automated
guided vehicle also called as AGV which can traverse the industry path without the
intervention of human control.

To demonstrate to use of robotic arm to unload the material at the work station. When the
AGV approaches the workstation, the robotic arm present at the workstation quickly
unloads the material at the workstation.

To add a safety feature to AGV, this automatically stops the AGV when there is an object
of human on the path of AGV.

Principle of operation of AGV

The AGV works on the principle of line following. The sensors mounted beneath AGV detect
the presence of line on industry shop floor. This is done by using black line on white floor. As
we all know black color absorbs the entire radiation incident on it.
The sensors used are infrared Tx Rx pair. The transmitter from sensor transmits the radiation.
This radiation hits the ground nd reflected radiation is detected by the receiver. If line is present
below the sensor entire radiation will be absorbed by the black line and no radiation will be
sensed at receivers end. This will give the receiver output as low.
This output data is fed to the microcontroller which processes it and signals the output to
vehicles drive train to navigate along the path.
When the vehicle approaches the workstation the AGV automatically detects the presence of
workstation using a sensor and stops automatically at a particular workstation waiting for the
robotic arm to unload the material present on the AGV. When the material is unloaded the AGV
returns at the base station, to load another material.
There is also a safety feature added at the AGV, which automatically stops the AGV when there
is a presence of obstacle in the path of AGV. This helps in preventing the catastrophic damage to
AGV or the injuries caused to the humans if there is collision between AGV and human.

Research Methodology:
This project involves design and fabrication of prototype of AGV. This project is divided into
different modules for the simplicity of achieving the tasks associated with AGV. The AGV is
fully functional with the help of these three major components:
1) Sensor Array
2) Microcontroller board
3) Drive train
4) Robot Arm at work Station
5) Collision detection for safety

1) SENSOR ARRAYS
A sensor is defined as a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a
signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument. The task of the sensor here
is to follow the line on industry shop floor. This can be done with the help of reflectance
sensors. The sensors used in this project will be infrared tx-rx sensors.
This sensor consists of an infrared transmitter which emits infrared rays. These rays hit
the ground. If the black line is below the sensor then entire radiation will be absorbed by
the line and no radiation will be sensed at the receivers end. This will give the sensor
output as low.
If there is no line i.e. white surface (industry shop floor) the entire radiation will be
reflected and sensor output will be high.
This output is fed to the microcontroller which processes the output of sensor and signals
the drive train accordingly.

2) MICROCONTROLLER BOARD:
The microcontroller proposed to be used here is ATMELS AVR ATMEGA 328
MICROCONTROLLER with arduino firmware. A microcontroller (sometimes
abbreviated C, uC or MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit
containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals.
Program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip,
as well as a typically small amount of RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded
applications, in contrast to the microprocessors used in personal computers or other
general purpose applications.
The high-performance Atmel 8-bit AVR RISC-based microcontroller combines 32KB
ISP flash memory with read-while-write capabilities, 1KB EEPROM, 2KB SRAM, 23
general purpose I/O lines, 32 general purpose working registers, three flexible
timer/counters with compare modes, internal and external interrupts,serial programmable
USART, a byte-oriented 2-wire serial interface, SPI serial port, 6-channel 10-bit A/D
converter (8-channels in TQFP and QFN/MLF packages), programmable watchdog timer
with internal oscillator, and five software selectable power saving modes. The device
operates between 1.8-5.5 volts.
By executing powerful instructions in a single clock cycle, the device achieves
throughputs approaching 1 MIPS per MHz, balancing power consumption and processing
speed.

The output of sensor is fed to this microcontroller. The drive train is connected to the
other end of microcontroller. The microcontroller processes the output of IR sensors and
then signal the drive train to carry out the particular task i.e. line following.

3) THE DRIVE TRAIN:

The drive train consists of D.C motors with gearbox to provide the necessary torque to
move the vehicle.
The processed data from the microcontroller is fed to the motor driver which drives the
motors. A motor driver is a device or group of devices that serves to govern in some
predetermined manner the performance of an electric motor.
Using these three important components the AGV navigates through the path printed on
industry shop floor. The block diagram of AGV is as shown below:
4) The Robot Arm at the workstation:
The robot arm is provided at the workstation which does the work of unloading the
material from the AGV. When the AGV approaches the workstation, it automatically
stops at the workstation, detecting the presence of the workstation. The AGV waits at the
workstation till the material is unloaded from the AGV. Then the AGV moved forward.
5) Collision detection for safety:
The AGV also incorporates the feature of safety of the workers. The AGV is incorporated
with a sensor to detect obstacles in its path. Whenever there is presence of obstacle the
AGV automatically stops till the obstacle is removes and sounds a buzzer to notify the
workers that there is obstacle in the path of AGV.

Block Diagram of AGV:

A
T

S
E
N
S
O
R

MOTOR 1

V
E

3
R

MOTOR 2

References
1)
2)
3)
4)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle
Beginning Arduino by Michael McRoberts
Robotics with AVR by Toshendra Sharma
Robotics: Modelling planning and control by
Villani
5) AGVS at work by Gray Hammond.

Luigi